Practice Support Coordinator, French desk, Warsaw HUB

The Role

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 lawyers in in our Paris office.

Who you will work with

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

What you will be responsible for

The Practice Support Coordinator is responsible for providing professional core business support to the Firm's fee earners. The support provided will be as part of a team with shared responsibilities and collective accountability, working with the firm's Business Professional teams. The Practice Support Coordinator is expected to create positive working relationships with lawyers and their colleagues to provide excellent business support. You will take personal responsibility for ensuring that any service issues are resolved as quickly as possible and will take full ownership of these issues, permitting the people you are allocated to support to concentrate on looking after our clients. The Practice Support Coordinator is responsible for ensuring that all activities are carried out in compliance with the firm's policies and regulatory requirements.

What you will do

Practice Management

• Acting as key point of contact and taking full responsibility for incoming queries both internally and externally via phone email and other workflow tools like Service Now. 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 Clifford Chance 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, filing, 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 files, proofreading, generic blacklining, liaising with specialist teams including Global Business Services team, local 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 teams as necessary and ensuring that presentations/documents/pitches are delivered to both lawyers and Business Professional team members (including the Business Development 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.
• Organising events in collaboration with Events team: internal and external client and team events, social 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 lawyers and Business Professionals teams: 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 lawyers 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 versions are available,