Legal Secretary – Family Full Time

About Us

Birketts is a full service, UK Top 50 law firm. With a heritage spanning 160 years, we have more than 700 lawyers and legal professionals and over 600 staff based in Bristol, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, London, Norwich and Sevenoaks. We advise businesses, government and public sector organisations and individuals in the UK and internationally across four principal practice groups: Real Estate, Corporate Services, Dispute Resolution and Private Client.

The team you will join

Our Family team is a highly successful and entrepreneurial team at an exciting time of growth. We are proud to have one of the most respected and dedicated family law teams in the country, comprising 8 partners and 26 fee earners, including mediators, financial/children arbitrators, and 6 One Couple One Lawyer practitioners.

We operate as a single, collaborative team across all locations, and are known for our innovative, supportive, and inclusive culture. In recognition of this, we were named LexisNexis Best Family Workplace of the Year 2024.

The team covers:

• Divorce
• Separation
• Relationship difficulties
• Modern Families – includes surrogacy, adoption, fertility law
• International family issues
• Pre and post marriage agreements
• Children arrangements
• Mediation
• One Couple One lawyer
• Arbitration
• Financial arrangements

The work you will be doing

You will work in the Family Team to provide professional, pro-active, high level secretarial support on a broad range of issues relating to all aspects of the family law services we offer.

Technical ability:

• To produce and amend documents including PDF court bundles with speed and accuracy.
• To format, paginate, number and present documents in Birketts LLP house style
• To proof read all work, checking for spelling and grammar
• To be a user of key software packages and take responsibility for any training needs to improve relevant skills needed to meet the needs of the business
• To proactively work with the fee earners to ensure relevant documentation is produced to meet clients’ expectations and deadlines

Administrative skills:

• Manage diaries of fee earners in Microsoft Outlook
• To scan and save incoming and outgoing post
• Familiarity with the creation and management of datarooms and file management processes
• To add and amend data on Intapp, including contact details intermediaries, and referrals into and out of the team
• To open new clients and to open and close matters and carry out conflict checks where appropriate
• To complete the client engagement process, including preparing letters of engagement and sending Thirdfort invitations
• Arranging meetings/conferences
• Sending and responding to invites
• To arrange payments
• To ensure that all electronic filing and paper based filing is up to date and maintained at regular intervals
• To keep team spreadsheets up to date
• To carry out photocopying and scanning as required
• Be the coordinator for mediation enquiries and matters

Please note that this job profile is not an exhaustive list of duties but merely an outline of the key components of the role. You may be required by your line manager to take on additional responsibilities when requested.

What we are looking for

You will have the ability to contribute at an operational level, with excellent communication skills and can demonstrate general skills in:

• Strong administration experience
• Positive, enthusiastic and professional approach to all work
• Reliable
• Strong attention to detail and high level organisational skills
• Self-motivated with an ability to use own initiative and a desire to learn
• A desire to share new processes to support the wider team

Skills

• Strong typing speed of at least 50 wpm
• Excellent spelling and punctuation
• Excellent written and verbal communications
• Ability to use discretion
• Excellent IT skills, including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel
• Positive and enthusiastic approach to team work
• Good telephone manner
• Adaptable and flexible
• Self-motivated, ability to use initiative and provide pro-active support to fee-earners
• Ability to pay attention to detail and check own work
• Reliable and well organised
• Ability to remain calm and work under pressure to meet strict deadlines
• Commitment to ongoing learning and development

Benefits

As a Birketts colleague, you will be eligible to receive a wide range of benefits:

• 25 days holiday (FTE) plus Bank Holidays
• Long Service holiday award – 1 extra week every 10 years continuous service
• Private Healthcare with BUPA (offered after probation is passed)
• Scottish Widows Pension Scheme (5% employer / 5% Employee)
• Staff Profit Share and Individual Performance Bonus Scheme
• Salary sacrifice (Pensions, Staff Profit Share)
• Life Assurance – 4 x salary / Permanent Health Insurance
• Paid CSR Day
• Enhanced Maternity/Paternity Leave
• Subsidised gym membership
• Electric car scheme
• Dress for your Day Policy