PA (Construction & Engineering Disputes)

You will play a key role at the heart of the team, providing high-level, professional and proactive PA support to the Service Line Leader (SLL) and a team of fee earners. This is a genuinely varied and fast-paced position where you’ll be a trusted go-to person, working closely with senior stakeholders, taking real ownership of your workload and making a visible impact. It’s an excellent opportunity for an experienced PA who is organised, confident and collaborative, and who enjoys building strong relationships across a dynamic, people-focused environment.

Responsibilities include:

• Provide professional, effective and proactive PA support to a number of Partners and fee earners within the Construction and Engineering Disputes service line.
• Have regular one-to-one meetings with fee earners to understand their proactive work needs for the week, record and follow up on actions including diary management, travel, meeting booking, expenses and billing.
• Take ownership for diary management (complex in the case of Partners) including anticipating and avoiding potential diary clashes, organising meetings and travel using initiative in advance of the planning and scheduling stage, and acting as gatekeeper for meeting invites and requests from across the business.
• Proactively take responsibility for travel arrangements (including international travel), conference and meeting bookings, and ensure any travel itineraries are prepared in advance together with any agendas required for meetings.
• Play an active role in managing the billing process by working closely with the finance team including accessing relevant reports, transferring time, ensuring correct rates, initial mark-up on billing guides and drafting emails for invoices to be sent to clients.
• Play a key role in managing financial administration for fee earners including monthly cost updates, updating client documents and requesting purchase order numbers.
• Assist with the file opening and client due diligence process where necessary; set up new matters and draft engagement letters.
• Collate and process expenses including proactive management in a timely manner.
• Monitor and assist with management of mailboxes including acting as gatekeeper to field messages and calls in a timely and professional manner.
• Deal with enquiries from clients, colleagues and third parties.
• Document comparisons and electronic filing.
• Draft short correspondence and communications; demonstrate excellent IT skills with the ability to amend and format large and complex documents.
• Develop and maintain positive relationships with the Construction & Engineering Disputes PA team and other client and internal contacts.
• Work with the team to continuously develop effective ways of working within the team.
• Assist with ad-hoc IT queries and liaising with the IT team to resolve these queries, particularly for new joiners.

Key Skills

We are looking for an experienced PA with a proactive work ethic. The position requires someone with drive and ambition who is able to use their own initiative, has first-class organisational skills and is an integral team player. Flexibility and proactivity are essential personal attributes.

You will also be able to demonstrate:

• The ability to handle complex diary management and meeting arrangements.
• A team player with excellent relationship-building skills; great at maintaining good working relationships with fee earners and PAs in the team.
• The ability to prioritise work effectively, working under pressure and to tight deadlines.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Capable of taking initiative and developing solutions.
• The ability to work with confidentiality, discretion and diplomacy.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Excellent IT skills using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
• The ability to prepare financial reports for clients.

We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits. We value the health and wellbeing of our people and our wide range of initiatives and benefits support this.

Our recruitment process

Please note that although we include closing dates for our roles as a guide, we review and progress applications on a rolling basis. At Osborne Clarke we do not make any recruitment decisions using automated decision-making.

We are committed to providing an environment where you can perform to the best of your abilities at every stage of your recruitment experience and beyond. If you require any adjustments to be made during the application stage, interview process, or when working with us, please let us know in confidence.