Legal Services Office Manager & Personal Assistant to General Counsel

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 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., 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., The Trust is committed to promoting a healthy work-life balance and achieve fair, equitable and consistent practice. We welcome flexible working requests and will consider a variety of flexible working arrangements from day one of your employment. Not all roles are suitable for every flexible working opportunity all of the time. Flexible working options may include reduced hours, compressed hours, fixed shifts, time back in lieu and home working. The Trust is committed to promoting equality and diversity; we value the contribution of individual talent, skills, knowledge and experience and aim for a workforce demography representative of the local community. We encourage applicants from the following groups that are currently under-represented in our workforce black, Asian and minority ethnic, lesbian, gay, bisexual and Transgender (LGBTQ+), disabled, male and age 16-24. Trust policy requires that the cost of submitting & processing the successful applicant/s DBS application be recovered via salary deduction following start in post. The amount of £25.70 (standard disclosure) or £46.70 (enhanced disclosure) will be deducted from salary, in manageable monthly instalments for up to 3 months following commencement of employment. Bank posts require upfront payment. From April 2017, Skilled visa applicants and their adult dependant(s) will be required to provide a criminal record certificate from each country they have lived in consecutively for 12 months or more in the past ten years. Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa. This organisation has a zero-tolerance approach to the abuse of children, young people and vulnerable adults. All staff must ensure they adhere to the organisations safeguarding children and adults' policy and comply with the Local Safeguarding Children and Adult Board procedures. Staff should be mindful of their responsibility to safeguard children and adults in any activity performed on behalf of the organisation in line with the requirements of statutory guidance and legislation. All employees (and volunteers)are expected maintain their safeguarding knowledge and skills by completing mandatory safeguarding training which includes understanding and recognising the signs of abuse and neglect and taking appropriate action. As an organisation, we have adopted the Merseyside Domestic abuse workplace scheme which supports our staff who are experiencing Domestic Abuse /any forms of sexual violence. If you have any personal requirements that will enable you to participate in our recruitment process please contact a member of the Recruitment Services by phone on at the earliest opportunity to ensure that measures can be put in place to enable your application for this post. Our statement on modern slavery We have zero tolerance of slavery and human trafficking and are committed to maintaining and improving systems, processes and policies to avoid complicity in human rights violation and to prevent slavery and human trafficking in our supply chain. The Trust policies, procedures, governance and legal arrangements are robust, ensuring that proper checks and due diligence are applied in employment procedures to ensure compliance with this legislation. We also conform to the NHS employment check standards within our workforce recruitment and selection practices. This strategic approach incorporates analysis of the Trust's supply chains and its partners to assess risk exposure and management on modern slavery. Please note: new entrants to the NHS will commence on the first pay point of the relevant band.

• Educated to GCSE level (or equivalent) including English and Maths
• NVQ Level 4 in Business Administration or equivalent experience
• Personal Assistant or Office Management qualification or equivalent experience, Significant experience of management of a professional administration service or within a Personal Assistant role
• Line management of junior administrative staff
• Experience of implementing administrative systems and/or developing administrative solutions to workflows/processes
Desirable criteria
• Working within an NHS legal team or solicitor's firm, Strong understanding of administrative and office management systems
• Understanding of confidentiality and data protection
Desirable criteria
• Understanding of the Civil Procedure Rules and NHS Resolution claims reporting requirements
• Knowledge of risk management systems such as Datix and InPhase, Proficient in use of MS 365 applications
• Excellent communication skills (both written and verbal) and interpersonal skills, with a wide range of staff, able to adjust communication style appropriately depending on audience
• Able to plan and manage workload
• Able to multitask in a demanding environment
• Ability to pro-actively manage workload and priorities, including that of others in the team and able to direct workflow and team members accordingly according to service demand
• Able to effectively communicate and work with multiple legal team members from differing backgrounds and with different levels of expertise
• Able to identify administrative system issues or gaps, think creatively and analyse potential solutions and implement changes to improve service and respond to the evolving needs of the team
• Excellent command of English language, including spelling and grammar
• Able to adjust and adapt depending on the evolving requirements of the role, willingness to learn and develop
  
  NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group (UHL Group) was formed on 1 November 2024, born from a shared aim to improve the care we provide our communities.
We are one of the largest employers in region, with over 18,900 colleagues who are dedicated to caring for our communities - from birth and beyond. For the 630,000 people across Merseyside, we are their local NHS. We provide general and emergency hospital care, alongside highly specialised regional services that extend to more than two million people in the North West. We operate from five hospital sites: Aintree University Hospital is the single receiving site for adult major trauma patients in Cheshire and Merseyside, and hosts a number of regional services including an award-winning stroke facility. Broadgreen Hospital is home to several elective surgical, diagnostic and treatment services, together with specialist patient rehabilitation. Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital provide specialist services in cardiothoracic surgery, cardiology and respiratory medicine, both in the hospital and out in the community. Liverpool Women's Hospital specialises in the health of women and babies, delivering over 7,200 babies in the UK's largest single site maternity hospital each year. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital is the largest hospital in the country to provide inpatients with 100% single en-suite bedrooms and mainly focuses on complex planned care and specialist services., 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.

Note: Under current Home Office Immigration Rules we are currently unable to offer right to work visa sponsorship for Band 2 and 3 roles with a salary of less than £25,000 pa as they do not meet the UK Visas & Immigration criteria.