Legal Secretary

About the Role

Possess excellent people skills, organization and planning skills and the ability to adapt to changing priorities. Requires creativity and the ability to think innovatively and exercise independent judgment when necessary.

Responsibilities

• Delivers excellent work and superior service to the Firm's clients; contributes to the Firm's reputation for excellence by providing highly efficient and effective secretarial and administrative support to a legal team consisting of five or more attorneys.
• Assist attorneys in meeting client-service support demands, including providing telephone support (answering questions and otherwise being helpful to callers), performing administrative tasks as requested and as usual in relation to task, performing document production and other related tasks, including receiving and editing proformas and communicating with Billing personnel.
• Communicates with attorneys and assists in balancing the team's workload to ensure completion of projects within established time frames and quality standards; seeks guidance when workload demands and deadlines dictate.
• Prepare internal paperwork, including expense vouchers, messenger vouchers and other such forms required by other support departments.
• Schedules various events and meetings. Work with Travel Department regarding business trips, schedule conference rooms using the Conference Room Scheduler, and order refreshments for meetings, when necessary. Legal Secretary should anticipate peripheral needs.
• Prepares and processes legal documents and papers including, but not limited to editing documents, preparing redlines, tables of contents and tables of authorities.
• Provides dependable, flexible support. Demonstrates teamwork by providing secretarial and administrative support to others as requested by the HR Manager whenever workload permits; contributes to the assimilation of new legal and support staff.
• Demonstrates knowledge of the Firm's secretarial policies and all applicable administrative procedures.
• Other responsibilities as may be assigned from time to time.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 7 years of law firm experience required, supporting a minimum of six attorneys.

Required Skills

• Interpersonal communication skills necessary in order to maintain effective relationships with partners, attorneys, clients and staff in person, by e-mail and telephone.
• Must be detailed oriented, able to work independently and in a team environment and able to implement high priority projects.
• Advanced skills in Word (using styles, track changes and document comparison programs); proficient in Excel and PowerPoint; Advanced skills with Outlook and Adobe Pro.
• Fundamental knowledge of legal terminology.
• Ability to provide a high level of customer service and be able to clearly and effectively communicate both verbally and in writing.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.
• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to:
• stay in a stationary position approximately 50% of the work day;
• occasionally move about the office to access file cabinets, office machinery, access office supplies and speak to their assigned attorneys;
• operate, activate and use a computer and other office productivity machinery including, but not limited to, a calculator, copy machine and computer printer;
• communicate, detect, converse with, discern, convey and exchange information with attorneys in the office, administration, accounting and peer staff members.
• employee is occasionally required to reach with hands and arms.
• employee may occasionally lift and/or transport up to 5 pounds.
• specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision and the ability to adjust focus.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

• The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job.
• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.