Head of Secretarial Services

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Kennedys is looking for a Head of Secretarial Services to join our Secretarial team based in the UK.

The Head of Secretarial Services is responsible for leading, managing, and developing the Firm's secretarial and administrative support function. This role ensures high-quality, efficient, and consistent secretarial support to fee earners while driving best practices, service excellence, and continuous improvement across the firm. In addition, this role is responsible for overseeing the support model to the Firm's senior leadership, including the Executive Group.

Key responsibilities

• Define and deliver the firm's UK secretarial services strategy in line with the strategic objectives.
• Lead, manage and motivate the secretary teams across all UK practice areas, working with the Secretarial Manager, Regional and Local Managing Partners, Divisional Heads and others to engage the teams.
• Manage the UK Secretarial Manager and Executive Office Manager.
• Lead on horizon scanning, workforce planning, and ensuring that we future proof the secretarial model and that it fulfils the needs of our Partners, lawyers and others.
• Working with other Business Services teams, define and deliver efficiencies across the function which result in improved service delivery to legal teams.
• Review and streamline workflows to improve efficiency and productivity.
• Lead initiatives related to new ways of working across the function, ensuring adoption and engagement firmwide.
• Drive adoption of legal technology, document management systems, and other digital tools.
• Partner with legal teams to understand current and future requirements and deliver solutions which drive client service.
• Ensure and oversee the delivery of an effective support model for senior leadership, including but not limited to the Executive Group, the Regional Managing Partners and the Business Services Leadership Team.
• Maintain a high-performance culture within secretarial function, ensuring the firm recruits and retains key talent.
• Take ultimate responsibility for delivering a fully resourced secretarial team, forecasting and allocating resources as appropriate.
• Work closely with colleagues in Business Services teams to ensure a collaborative approach, to ways of working, working especially closely with Finance, Risk & Compliance, Knowledge Management, Marketing & Business Development and HR.
• Manage departmental budgets and control costs effectively.

Required experience

• Previous secretarial leadership experience
• Strong leadership and people management skills
• Excellent organizational and prioritization abilities
• Strong understanding of law firm operations and legal support services
• Ability to manage change and drive continuous improvement
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• High attention to detail and commitment to quality
• Committed, enthusiastic and innovative
• Flexible and resilient with strong problem solving skills
• Self-motivated and able to work using own initiative and challenge working practices.

Please let us know if you require any additional support or adjustments to be made in order to submit your application to Kennedys.

*where a level of experience is indicated, this is a guideline only and represents the amount of time we would usually expect a candidate to accumulate the requisite level of experience. This does not preclude applications from candidates with more or less experience.

About Kennedys

Kennedys is a global law firm with expertise in dispute resolution and advisory services. With over 2,750 people worldwide across 47 offices in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and America we have some of the most respected legal minds in their field.

Our lawyers handle both contentious and non-contentious matters, and provide a range of specialist legal services, for many industry sectors but we have particular expertise in litigation and dispute resolution, especially in defending insurance and liability claims.

We're a fresh-thinking firm, and we're not afraid to bring challenging new perspectives to the table way beyond the traditional realm of legal services. We empower our clients with a diverse range of ideas, tools and technology to make their lives easier, as well as delivering exceptional results, every time.

What do we have to offer?

We welcome high-performing lawyers, business services professionals, secretaries, graduates and apprentices to join our rapidly expanding global firm. Whatever your role at Kennedys, you'll be involved in exciting and stimulating work, where your input will make a difference.

Our culture and values form a big part of who we are and we take them seriously. We make a difference by being approachable, straightforward, supportive, distinctive and ambitious. Our values are at the core of who we are and what make us a great firm to work with and for.

The Firm recognises the value of investing in our people's development and believes our culture and values contribute to the quality of our work and of our client relationships. With a culture of on-the-job and experiential learning, peer to peer learning, mentoring, resources and tools that enable you to drive your career, we can support your development in your current and future roles. A variety of other opportunities are available including secondments to clients and our global offices.

We strive to celebrate diversity, empower our people and ensure everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. We've created a culture based on client service, professional excellence, hard work and trust, where diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key priority. We recognise that many of our people want to work for an employer that is aligned to their values, which is why we are building an inclusive culture, decarbonising our operations and supporting our people to thrive at work. Our people are the key to driving this change and helping us to make a difference to our clients, our people and the communities in which we live and work.

Kennedys is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. We expect all employees to be aware of and comply with all relevant policies and procedures within their jurisdiction, including those relating to Information Security, Data Protection and Quality Management, refer any breach promptly to Risk & Compliance and to complete all mandatory training when requested.

Documents

• JD - Head of Secretarial Services- January 2026.pdf (106.00 KB)