We're currently looking for a Personal Assistant to join our Southampton office.

The team

Our Executive Services team consists of three 'hubs': a Document Production Specialist hub providing a transcription service, an Executive Support Assistant hub providing support with administrative tasks and a Personal Assistant hub, which you will join, providing organisational and client care support.  All three hubs work collaboratively to provide a seamless and efficient service to our fee earners across the business.

The role

As a Personal Assistant you will deliver high quality support to a number of fee earners to include:

• providing comprehensive support on management and partnership matters, including the preparation of departmental reports, financial information and presentation materials
• acting as the first point of contact for internal and external clients, focusing on adding value to client / fee earner relationships; 
• managing telephone calls and incoming communications on behalf of lawyers, exercising judgement to respond appropriately, prioritising actions and ensuring timely follow‑up
• completing financial tasks such as expenses, taking a leading role in the billing process and maintaining budgetary information and financial spreadsheets;
• supporting client reporting and financial information preparation
• proactively managing and maintaining complex diaries, arranging client, partner and departmental meetings, coordinating catering, meeting rooms and venues;
• supporting meetings by circulating agendas and papers in advance;
• assisting with the organisation of events, including maintaining mailing lists, issuing invitations, welcoming clients and supporting virtual events via Microsoft Teams or similar platforms;
• co-ordinating complex travel arrangements, including rail and air travel, accommodation and producing comprehensive travel packs and itineraries;
• creating and maintaining client engagement letters and matter specifications, ensuring accurate matter administration and compliance with firm processes
• maintaining accurate and up to date business contact information, managing reminder systems and organising workloads efficiently; and
• carrying out tasks specific to the Real Estate practice area, including supporting high‑volume, transactional and operationally complex matters
• adapting support to different Real Estate sub‑specialisms such as Residential, Developers & Investors, and Operational Property

What are we looking for?

To be successful in this role you'll need as a minimum:

• Experience of working in a Personal Assistant capacity or similar role within a professional services organisation
• Proficiency in MS Office suite and experience of working with other in-house office systems
• Excellent communication skills and being able to utilise them via different methods such as emails, phone calls and letters
• Experience managing and prioritising your workload in line with department service level agreements

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, neurodiversity, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about DEI at WBD here. We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page. Please also let us know if you need this job advert or the application form in a different format.

We will offer an interview to candidates with a disability or long-term condition who meet the minimum criteria for this role. You can opt into this scheme within the application form. Your response to this question is only used for this purpose, is only visible to the recruitment team and is not used for data monitoring. 

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.