Practice Support Manager - Personal & Family

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At Brodies LLP, we value and respect all colleagues as individuals. As a UK law firm headquartered in Scotland, we believe that the experiences and perspectives of a diverse workforce that reflects our communities, and the clients we serve, allows us to see the world through many lenses.

As the largest firm in our jurisdiction measured by income, directory rankings, and lawyer numbers, the progress we continue to make is testament to the commitment of our colleagues.

In the last three years, our firm's revenue has grown by 20%, and we have welcomed almost 100 new colleagues. Today, we have more than 800 colleagues and offices in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, London, Abu Dhabi and Brussels.

JOB TITLE

Practice Support Manager - Personal & Family - 12 months fixed term contract

Based in Edinburgh or Glasgow with frequent travel across the central belt, to Aberdeen & Inverness

REPORTING TO

Secretarial Engagement Manager (SEM)

JOB PURPOSE

The primary responsibility of the Practice Support Manager (PSM) is to deliver effective and efficient operational and administrative support to their assigned practice area. This service will be predominantly delivered via the Executive Assistants and Legal Document Secretaries/Transaction Support Assistants, Secretarial Support Assistants and Senior Executive Assistant line managed by the PSM. The Secretarial Engagement Manager (SEM) is the line manager of the PSM and has overall responsibility for the secretarial function.

CORE TASKS

• Provide line management to and have responsibility for the secretarial colleagues supporting the practice area. This includes providing advice, guidance and coaching to team members, encouraging a collaborative and cohesive team environment.
• Work closely with the partners and legal services colleagues in the practice area to develop a robust understanding of their needs, building appropriate plans to support delivery and address any challenges. Have a continual focus on having processes and resource in place to ensure administrative and other relevant non chargeable tasks are undertaken by the secretarial team and not legal services colleagues.
• Identify skills and expertise required to deliver an effective service. Work with team members to assess any skills gaps or training needs, partnering with the relevant teams in People Engagement and I&T to address any gaps.
• Adopt a continuous improvement mindset, identifying opportunities for process improvement (particularly in relation to technology) and enhanced service delivery and encouraging others to do the same.
• Work with the partners and legal services colleagues in the practice area to understand and address, update and monitor processes or activities required for risk management purposes including but not limited to storage of principal documents, updating the key dates database, distribution of mail, updating executry packets.
• Manage the workload across the Personal practice area, monitoring the number of jobs on Big Hand and the personal inboxes in terms of number scale and importance, and reallocating tasks where necessary to keep workloads as even as possible. Collaborate with the Snr EA for Family with managing workload allocation for the Family practice area.
• Communicate regularly and clearly with the Personal legal team with regards to resource and support including holidays and sickness absence.
• Responsible for line management activities including 3-month reviews, performance reviews and appraisals, collaborating with the Snr EA for Family where these activities apply to Family EAs.
• Plan for resource needs and undertake recruitment in conjunction with the SEM.
• Partner with People Engagement to address any performance, absence or wellbeing issues within the team.
• Monitor and approve annual leave requests for the Personal practice area. Monitor unplanned absence and emergency/dependent leave. Ensure legal services colleagues are aware of absences (whether planned or unplanned) and that resource is in place to cover, ensuring consistency of service.
• Monitor and approve overtime and TOIL requests.
• Training of new secretarial colleagues in a timely manner, develop standard training plans, develop and monitor ongoing training for colleagues.
• Ensure secretarial colleagues have ongoing training including specifically aderant, Word 10 ,bundledocs and all other relevant technologies and tools.
• Manage the legal services allocations within the Personal teams, including for any new joiners (secretarial colleagues and legal services colleagues). Update the BigHand server and colleague directory with any new joiners/changes to allocations.
• Allocate Trainees to their EA in line with their allocated Line Manager in advance of the Personal practice area seat moves taking place.
• Be aware of Brodies' information security policies, and protect information assets from unauthorised access, disclosure, modification, destruction or interference at all times.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

• Highly experienced line manager and Executive Assistant/Personal Assistant.
• Strong communicator with the ability to build relationships and influence colleagues at all levels across the firm.
• Self-motivated.
• Resilient
• Ability to work through ambiguity to identify core issues, putting in place plans to address
• Expectation setting & management
• Ability to work under pressure, often with tight deadlines.
• Proactive in problem solving.
• Ability to effectively communicate (both verbally and written) at all levels to achieve positive outcomes, with a demonstrated ability to persuasively facilitate opposing views.
• Flexible in adapting your working style.
• Ability to work independently, with minimal day to day instruction and supervision.
• Ability to quickly understand / adapt to change and conflicting priorities of stakeholders.
• Ability to multitask and prioritise.
• Actively support the Firm's vision and strategies including embracing and promoting change and communicating and executing on challenging decisions.

SKILLS

• Excellent in the use of Microsoft applications:
• Word - track changes/mail merge.
• Outlook - diary management, contacts, tasks.
• Excel.
• PowerPoint.
• Experience of DMS (essential).
• Experience of Bighand (essential).