Practice Support Coordinator

Whatever your area of expertise, you will find a range of career opportunities at Clifford Chance. And wherever you’re heading, Clifford Chance is where you can be true to your ambitions.

Our firm, work and people span jurisdictions, cultures and languages. In a world where commercial success increasingly relies on globalisation, we offer clients a truly international perspective, and we offer our people a rewarding and stimulating career.

We're proud of our approachable, friendly and team-based way of working. Highly professional and self-assured, with an entrepreneurial streak, our people are more than happy to share their expertise and knowledge.

The Practice Support Coordinator is responsible for providing professional administrative support to the lawyers of the Firm in relation to both billable and non-billable work, and ensuring clients are serviced in a professional manner and in accordance with the Firm's policies. The role will be part of the Hub in Warsaw and will include working as part of a team to ensure a high-quality service to all stakeholders. The specific purpose of this role is to assist the allocated fee earners in one of our German offices.

You will predominantly be working with the members of the practice group (allocated fee earners), as well as secretarial colleagues from Continental Europe (particularly Germany) as well as the offshore teams in India.

Practice Management

• Acting as key point of contact and taking full responsibility for incoming queries both internally and externally via phone or email: pre-empting requirements, drafting or providing responses, filing and archiving, prioritising and actioning, as well as screening calls, answering queries, taking messages and directing enquiries to appropriate CC teams as necessary.
• Managing diaries: organising meetings across different time zones, coordinating meeting requirements including room bookings, managing diary conflicts, preparation for meetings including necessary documentation, liaising with internal and external attendees on availability, and organising catering.
• Setting up appropriate file management systems: filing emails and documents, archiving and other document management activities such as filing, photocopying, scanning, printing and storing, and arranging couriers.
• Arranging domestic and international travel: visas, vaccinations, currency, flights, hotels, maps, client information, itineraries and liaising with our in-house travel provider as required.
• Preparing and drafting letters, email correspondence, pitch and presentation documentation with direction and input from the people you support.
• Managing beginning-to-end document management processes: amending, collating PDFs and renaming, proofreading, generic blacklining, liaising with specialist CC teams including GBS, Service Teams, Legal Support Centre.
• Encouraging and proactively following up with the people you are allocated to support on the completion of their mandatory training requirements, other course requirements and ensuring that they are adhering to risk and compliance policies, such as Security Policy Manager (SPM) compliance and engagement letter compliance
• Participating in the delivery of ad hoc projects and tasks as required.

Client Focus and Support

• Progressing and assisting with client relationship initiatives: arranging and attending meetings, calls or other associated actions as required.
• Creating or amending PowerPoint Presentations, Excel documents or fee quote documentation to an intermediate level. This will include involving specialist CC teams as necessary and ensuring that presentations/documents/pitches are delivered to both fee earners and Business Professional team members (including the BD team) as per their initial brief.
• Building relationships with internal and external clients and key stakeholders as appropriate and maintaining knowledge of matters from inception to completion for allocated fee earners.
• Collating and capturing the correct client and matter-related information in the core systems.
• Organising events together/ in collaboration with Events team: internal and external client and team events, socials, events, retreats and deal-closing lunches and dinners, together with any associated tasks such as researching venues, invitations, collating RSVPs, drafting communications and event management as required.
• Carrying out research tasks to support fee earners and Business Professional team: researching venues for events and gathering client intelligence for marketing, capability statements and pitch materials.
• Assisting client and market development teams with client relationship activities: cross-practice client events, maintaining and updating client contact information on Interaction, including mailing lists, RSVPs and registration.

Financial and Matter Management

• Providing financial management support from inception through to billing: supporting the firm's commercial discipline initiatives.
• Working with Accounts Payable to raise timely and accurate invoices to ensure payment on time.
• Attending work in progress (WIP) and debtor meetings as required and following up on action points with the billing team.
• Supporting your fee earner allocation with Time Sheet entries: proactively inputting holidays and absences, resolving unposted time and managing held time.
• Providing support and guidance on Expert Time.
• Assisting with good housekeeping of documentation including post-closing administration as required: ensuring deliverables such as share certificates and security are registered, preparing bibles, ensuring that digital and hard copy versions are available, sending out bibles to all parties as required, bind originals of large documents, make copies of all originals and distribute as needed.

Best Delivery

• Encouraging use of the Best Delivery hubs.
• Engaging with and using the firm's Best Delivery tools to provide efficient support and to advise on the use of such tools, including CC Connect, Transact, LoopUp, Contract Companion and Matter Balance Reports (MBRs).
• Facilitating end of matter review to identify follow on opportunities such as deal reviews, KETL opportunities .

• Fluency both in German and English languages. Any additional language skills would be considered as an asset.
• 5+ years' experience, preferably in a multinational organisation with proven experience as an Executive Assistant or personal secretary to Senior Management.
• Ability to work in a virtual environment and provision of remote support
• In-depth understanding of entire MS Office suite (Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel)
• Strong organizational, project management and problem-solving skills with impeccable multi-tasking abilities.
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and work well under pressure
• Strong attention to detail
• Approachable, helpful and flexible

At Clifford Chance we understand that our true asset is our people. Inclusion is good for our team and their families, our firm and society.

We are committed to treating all employees and applicants fairly and equally regardless of their gender, gender identity and expression, marital or civil partnership status, race, colour, national or ethnic origin, social or economic background, disability, religious belief, sexual orientation, or age.  This applies to recruitment and selection, terms and conditions of employment including pay, promotion, training, transfer and every other aspect of employment.

Our goal is to deliver an equality of opportunity, an equality of aspiration and an equality of experience to everyone who works in our firm. Find out more here.