What are the responsibilities and job description for the Legal Secretary position at WilmerHale?
WilmerHale is a leading, full-service international law firm with 1,000 lawyers located throughout 12 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. Our lawyers work at the intersection of government, technology and business, and we remain committed to our guiding principles of providing quality, excellent legal and client services; developing diversity among our lawyers and staff and cultivating an environment that promotes an ambitious spirit, collaboration and collegiality by drawing on the extraordinary talents and dynamic experience of our lawyers. Our goal is to reflect the diversity of our clients and the communities in which we practice.
What You Will Be Doing
Delivers excellent work and superior service to the Firm's clients; contributes to the Firm's reputation for excellence by providing highly efficient and effective secretarial and administrative support to a legal team consisting of three or more timekeepers (attorneys and/or paralegals).
About this Role
- Assumes responsibility for ensuring the efficient daily administrative operations of the assigned legal team.
- Communicates with attorneys and helps balance the team's workload to ensure completion of projects within established time frames and quality standards; seeks assistance from the Secretarial Resources Manager when workload demands and deadlines require. Demonstrates mastery of the Firm's word processing system by producing a variety of documents from various source materials, which may include dictaphone tapes.
- Composes routine and non-routine correspondence for attorney review as requested.
- Demonstrates knowledge of the Firm's secretarial policies and all applicable administrative procedures.
- Provides administrative support to assigned legal team by ensuring the organization of work flow, files and recordkeeping, including preparation of timesheets and client bills, and the processing of incoming and outgoing mail and overnight deliveries.
- Assists in organizing work schedule by maintaining calendar, scheduling appointments and coordinating travel arrangements. Proactively supports Firm-wide client service initiatives.
- Provides quality service to internal departments and external parties by interacting professionally and displaying a "can do" attitude via electronic and print correspondence, when answering telephone calls, taking and relaying messages, greeting visitors and coordinating attorney, client or other inquiries in the absence of the attorney.
- Maintains a professional relationship with other legal counsel, courts, agencies and professional organizations with whom the attorney(s) works.
- Acts as liaison with the Firm's internal service departments to ensure the provision of quality services to the legal team and WilmerHale's clients.
- Demonstrates teamwork by providing secretarial and administrative support to neighboring legal teams, or, as requested by the Secretarial Resources Manager, whenever workload permits; contributes to the assimilation and training of new legal and support staff. Assists legal team with non-client matters, which may include miscellaneous work, generated from outside activities and "pro bono" legal work.
- Assumes additional responsibilities as requested. Contributes to the Firm's Service Excellence initiative to consistently improve its image internally and externally.
- Displays professionalism, quality service and a "can do" attitude to internal members/departments of the Firm as well as external clients and vendors via electronic and print correspondence, over the telephone and in-person.
