Senior Resource Manager

We are looking for an experienced Senior Resource Manager to support our busy Real Estate teams. The role can be based in either our Manchester or Sheffield office., We are seeking to hire an experienced Resource Manager to provide our Real Estate teams with work allocation and resource management support with the aim to move to a more structured resource management approach, to better support diversity and inclusion, to enable the management of people, and their performance and development in an increasingly flexible environment, and to encourage greater collaboration across teams and locations.

The Resource Manager will:

• Be the business services lead for allocating work throughout the different Real Estate teams and will make sure there is a fair and equal access to work for fee earners with work allocation based on skills rather than personal relationships which limits unconscious bias.


• Improve career development of our people, giving them access to a wider variety of work which matches their development needs and aspirations, resulting in higher levels of engagement and a higher level of retention.


• Be more readily able to identify training needs/ performance issues and coordinate with Partners/HR/PSLs/L&D to manage this more proactively. This also applies to the identification and management of wellbeing issues.


• Even utilisation across teams / locations resulting in more efficient use of resource and enabling greater cross working across locations/ teams.


• Provides access to improved management information to support decision making in relation to people management at team and practice group level.


• Allows resource management to proactively support the allocation of resources against client rates to optimise profitability.


• Support on the implementation of a new resource management tool and implement any changes required to the structure, process and approach alongside this third-party tool.


Key responsibilities
Working with the Practice Group Leads (PGLs), Team leads (TLs) and other Partners:

• Developing an excellent working and trusted relationship with our partners to gain a deep understanding on their practice, pressure points and resourcing needs and keeping this knowledge up-to date.


• Keeping partners abreast of capacity generally and attending Real Estate team meetings and Partners' meetings as necessary.


• Providing weekly utilisation and projected capacity reports to the Real Estate partners as well as providing more regular updates to the PGLs, TLs, and other partners as needed.


• Review utilisation and overall hours (i.e. including chargeable and non-chargeable time) stats on a daily and weekly basis flagging any areas of concern in real time to the partner group as required.


Working with Fee earners:

• Developing an excellent working relationship with the fee earners (counsel, associates, trainees and paralegals) to understand pressure points, capacity, skill sets and skill gaps and assisting with matching the fee earners preferences (where possible) to work that becomes available.


• Understanding and mapping the skills in the team (with the support of a new resource management tool), including where there are with outstanding experience needs as well as understanding their career aspirations.


• Proactively monitoring, reminding, and chasing fee earners to update their capacity forecast on a weekly basis.

Working within the Practice Management Team and with other Business Support Services:

• Work closely with the other resource managers in the firm to develop a global, best practice approach to work allocation practices by sharing guidance and experience.


• Work closely with the Practice Management, Finance, HR , Project Management and Business Development teams on people initiatives, issues and best practices.


• Assist with (internal) secondments and recruitment.


• Liaise with trainee supervisors to monitor trainee performance and allocate appropriate range of work.

Analysis and Reporting:

• Carry out weekly and monthly work allocation analysis to report on trends, recommendations to smooth utilisation or improve processes where needed and to flag any areas of concern to be addressed.


• Compare individual and the team's forecasted utilisation against actual utilisation, on a weekly basis, and providing support to address consistent inconsistencies as needed.


• Being aware and keeping track of holidays and mapping holidays to utilisation to pro-actively recommend work re-allocation solutions (where needed) ahead of time.
  
  Prior experience in work allocation or resource management within a legal, professional services or corporate environment is highly advantageous.


• Qualified lawyer or other professional with a law degree or relevant experience within the legal sector.


• Strong commercial acumen and business awareness.


• Outstanding communication and negotiation skills.


• Strong stakeholder management skis and able to build relationships at all levels


• Strong project management skills.


• Client service focus.


• Strong judgment.


• Proactive, resourceful, takes initiative.


• Excellent written and oral communication.


• Persistence and resilience.


• Able to drive change and transformation; comfortable with ambiguity.


• Persuasive and able to influence senior decision makers.


• Discreet and confidential, able to deal with situations sensitively.


• Competent in Excel.


• Experience working with resource management software would be advantageous.
  
  CMS is a Future Facing firm with more than 70 offices in over 40 countries and 5,000+ lawyers worldwide. We combine deep local market understanding with a global perspective. We are passionate about building strong relationships with our clients, our people, and the communities we work in.


We take a bold, dynamic, and agile approach to ensure our clients are able to face the future with confidence. We are driven by technology and readily embrace the possibilities it opens up for developing new and better ways of working. Our aim is to inspire, impact and support our clients and our people, helping them to maximize their potential and thrive., With one of the largest real estate teams in the UK, we have the resource and expertise our clients need to respond to this fast-paced market. Our lawyers provide decisive, pragmatic solutions allowing clients to react quickly to seize opportunities. With dedicated planning, finance, tax, construction and dispute specialists as part of the group, we are able to ensure that our clients are realising the most value possible from their assets.

We are delighted to have maintained a Tier 1 ranking for Real Estate categories in the recently published Chambers and Legal 500 UK 2023 directories. We are one of the few City-based firms able to offer clients a truly full UK-wide service with offices in London, Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Reading, Liverpool and Sheffield.

In addition to our UK offering, the CMS Real Estate Sector practice is the largest real estate specialist team in Europe and one of the biggest worldwide, providing full-service legal assistance in all real estate matters. We have over 800 lawyers, spanning across 73 offices worldwide, the CMS Real Estate Practice is one of the largest specialist teams worldwide.