Practice Assistant

Firm Summary

White & Case is an elite global law firm serving leading companies, financial institutions, and governments worldwide. Our long history as an international firm means we are perfectly placed to help our clients resolve their most complex legal challenges wherever they may be.

With lawyers and staff operating from more than 47 locations, working in virtually every country of the world, we have invested heavily in building a high-quality full-service practice competing at the top of the market. We are distinguished by our on-the-ground presence in the world’s key financial markets and our strengths in handling complex cross-border work.

It’s not just about our global network of offices and shared services centers; it’s the global interconnectedness of the Firm that our people, and our clients, value most. We work well together across geographic and practice boundaries. It’s one of the reasons we attract and retain cross-border work. 

Our lawyers are globally minded, enterprising, collaborative, and committed to excellence. Our people represent 90 nationalities and speak 80 languages.

Position Summary

The Practice Assistant role is responsible for providing a wide range of secretarial, administrative and ad hoc projects. Working closely with partners and a team of lawyers. The Practice Assistant should proactively contribute to the Firm’s success by actively seeking to improve working processes, anticipate needs, and take action accordingly. The Practice Assistant Team is structured to collaborate and work as a unit alongside the Firm’s Practice Assistants across all global offices to provide a high quality, comprehensive workflow management and organizational service to service stakeholders within the Firm.

• Provide a high quality, comprehensive workflow management and organizational service to principals in the group/firm as required.
• Undertake all aspects of the Practice Assistant role as required.
• Take an active interest in, and obtain a thorough understanding of, all aspects of client requirements.
• Provide an excellent service to clients.
• Demonstrate flexibility in supporting principals and fellow team members.
• Proactively contribute to the group/Firm’s success by actively seeking to improve working processes, anticipate needs of clients and colleagues and take action accordingly.

Duties And Accountabilities1

Administrative

• Manage diaries, ensuring they are up to date.
• Arrange meetings, book conference rooms, refreshments, check rooms prior to meetings etc and liaise with other attendees, both internal and external.
• Arrange for travel bookings and related details to be made.
• Arrange photocopying, printing, organising couriers, incoming and outgoing mail, faxes etc.
• Arrange for files to be opened and closed, supervise general filing requirements and record keeping.
• Use effective systems to ensure that both short- and long-term tasks are completed within required timescales.
• Support lawyers in marketing activities including involvement in preparation of pitches and presentations.
• Establish and maintain effective and accurate filing systems (hard copy and electronic).

Communication

• Take internal and external telephone queries, responding as appropriate and/or ensuring that all messages are passed on in a timely manner.
• Monitor post and/or e-mails and dealing with as appropriate and ensure that all client related correspondence is passed on to an appropriate fee earner and actioned as necessary.
• Liaise with business support departments on behalf of lawyers as required.
• Liaise with the department’s Team Leader over any planned absences, arranging cover as necessary and communicating this to the relevant fee earners.
• Client relationship management
• Become an active part in the care of clients and be wholly familiar with contacts/clients.
• Enter, maintain and update client details and relevant information on the firm’s contacts system.
• Deal with basic client queries and general administration.
• Arrange client meetings.

Document

• Manage the production of documents and check returned work produced by the Document Production team before it is passed to the relevant lawyer and undertake basic/minor amendments where appropriate.
• Type urgent/short/confidential correspondence and emails.
• Produce and maintain Excel spreadsheets as required.
• Undertake all document production tasks to the highest standards and to agreed deadlines using appropriate software and all available resources.

Financial

• Assist lawyers in ensuring their time is recorded properly and entered onto the system on a daily basis. (Intapp)
• Assist lawyers in the billing and credit control process by liaising with the lawyer and accounts and to produce standard financial/time reports through the system.
• Billing and Expense Processing, handle expenses in our system (Chrome River).

Team Player

In addition to providing support to the fee-earners to whom they report, a Practice Assistant will also provide assistance to their immediate colleagues in the department and, where practical, other departments. Team duties will therefore include:

• Assisting others in the department whenever there is spare capacity or it is evident that a colleague needs assistance with their workload.
• Picking up telephone calls for other members of the department when they are away from their desk.
• Participating in a lunch time telephone rota within the Practice Assistant team.
• Assisting other members of the department, both proactively and at the request of the Team Leader.
• Working effectively with other legal and support departments as required.
• Any other duties as reasonably requested by the Lawyers or Team Leader, or a person of an appropriate seniority.

Qualifications

A Practice Assistant has a responsibility to ensure that their skill set is up to date, and they are familiar with the firm’s departments, key personnel, clients, internal systems and procedures. This will ensure that the Practice Assistant is able to carry out his or her role effectively.

• Bachelor’s/College Degree or equivalent.
• Relevant work experience is necessary.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Excellent customer service skills.
• Show excellent attention to detail.
• Proficient Microsoft Applications (Outlook, excel, Word, PowerPoint).
• Ensure all restricted information, matters, issues, and personal effects are treated with utmost confidentiality.
• Ability to exercise good judgment in a variety of situations, with strong written and verbal communication, administrative, time management and organizational skills.
• Flexible and can adapt to change in workflow requests.
• Resilient and self-confident.
• Foster good relationships with other members of the team and across the Firm.
• Fluency in French or Dutch, and English.

Location & Reporting

• This position is based in Brussels and reports to the Office Operations Manager.Note to recruitment agencies: When engaging with agencies, we are supported by our preferred suppliers. Our internal Recruitment team are responsible for all end-to-end lateral recruitment processes. All agencies must sign White & Case terms of business, which are office specific. Candidates submitted by an agency without terms of business agreed with the appropriate office, and/or outside of our online application tracking system, will not be considered a formal introduction.Any applications and CVs sent directly to White & Case Partners and employees will not be accepted as formal introductions.