Legal Services Office Manager & Personal Assistant to General Counsel

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join Legal Services as our Office Manager/Personal Assistant to General Counsel.

This is a key role at the heart of a busy in-house Legal Services team, providing high quality office management, administrative co-ordination and personal assistant support. The post holder will help ensure that the service operates effectively and efficiently, with well organised systems, clear processes and administrative support that enables our legal professionals to focus on the delivery of legal advice and casework.

This is not a role for someone who wants to be given direction on every task. We are looking for someone dynamic, creative and can bring their own ideas about how a high performing administrative service should work to best support the lawyers within the team and our external stakeholders. The role needs high attention to detail, commitment to quality, and will best suit a proactive and adaptable individual who can manage competing priorities, coordinate workflows and provide a consistently high standard of support. The successful candidate will have excellent communication and organisational skills, sound judgement and the confidence to work with colleagues and stakeholders across a busy professional service.

The role is an excellent opportunity for an experienced administrator, PA or office manager who would like to develop their career within a specialist NHS legal environment.

Main duties of the job

The Legal Office Manager/Personal Assistant is responsible for the effective day-to-day management and provision of administrative and office processes within Legal Services and for providing high-quality personal assistant support to the General Counsel and senior members of the Legal Services leadership team.

The post holder will ensure that Legal Services operates efficiently, with robust administrative systems, effective coordination and well-managed workflows, enabling legal professionals to focus on the delivery of legal advice and casework. The role requires provision and oversight of high quality administrative support, line management and supervision of junior administrative staff, coordination of workloads, independent prioritisation and close liaison with internal and external stakeholders.

The role does not provide legal advice or undertake legal case management but has responsibility for administrative service provision, organisation and coordination.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached the Job Description and Personal Specification which sets out further details of the main responsibilities of the role.

Manage the day-to-day administrative operations of the Legal Services team, ensuring systems, processes, and workflows are efficient and effective.

Act as the key point of coordination for legal administrative activity, undertaking administrative duties effectively and allocating work to administrative staff as appropriate and monitoring progress.

Maintain and oversee filing, document control, and records management systems in line with Trust policy, Department Standards and legal requirements.

Identify opportunities to improve administrative processes, and implement changes with agreement of the Legal Services leadership team.

Retrieve, open, log and distribute incoming post and emails in accordance with established procedures. Assist with monitoring of central mailbox to ensure queries and emails are reviewed, triaged and assigned in a timely fashion.

Maintain electronic and paper filing systems to ensure accurate, complete and up-to-date legal records.

Assist with routine administrative tasks relating to claims, inquests, court directions, and legal correspondence including filing, scanning, e-file management, and post where applicable.

Report new claims to NHS Resolution in accordance with claims reporting procedures

Provide comprehensive PA support to the General Counsel and senior legal staff, including diary management, meeting coordination, email management and document preparation.

Organise and manage meetings, including preparation of agendas, collation of papers, minute-taking, and follow-up of agreed actions.

Exercise judgement in prioritising requests and managing competing demands on senior staff time

Support induction and administrative on-boarding of new Legal Services staff.

When submitting your application please confirm whether you have used a generative AI tool (for example, Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT) in preparing your application and, if so, briefly describe how you used it.

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.