Evening Trainee Case Handler

Shoosmiths - UK Law Firm of the Year Winner at the Legal Week British Legal Awards 2015.

A leading UK law firm with a network of offices from the South Coast to Scotland, working together as one national team. An innovative practice and the first top 100 law firm to achieve “Gold Standard” Investors in People, our values and culture are not just words on our website but are the heartbeat of the firm. The lack of barriers between departments, a real lack of hierarchy, zero tolerance for arrogance and pomposity makes Shoosmiths a fantastic place to work.

Our Recoveries Services Group provides a complete range of debt recovery services utilising cutting edge technology and with specialists dealing with different debt types, all operating under a centralised management structure allowing us to deliver consistently excellent service. Our structure ensures we can provide a full range of volume recoveries and litigation options, whilst ensuring that we have the expertise and experience to deal with complex and technical issues arising from volume recoveries.

Our Unsecured Litigation Team act for a number of banks, building societies, other consumer finance lenders and debt purchasers, dealing with unsecured lending products including loans, credit cards, overdrafts and guarantees, together with advising on unenforceability and PPI mis-selling claims. We also have the expertise and experience to deal with disputed and complex claims, with our defended teams sitting alongside our recoveries teams and able to provide immediate advice, often preventing the escalation of a matter to a full blown defence. Our team is based at the Lakes and consists of a pre-issue and negotiation team, 3 undefended litigation teams and a team dealing with defended and non standard matters. These teams are supported by a customer care team (managing receipt of 1000s of payments per month), an administration team and an audit/training function providing our first line of defence for compliance/regulatory purposes.

Shoosmiths are looking for two Trainee Evening Case Handlers to join our Unsecured Litigation team within our Recoveries Services Practice Group, based within our Northampton office.

The hours are as follows:

Tuesdays and Wednesdays 3.30pm-8pm and alternate Saturday mornings 9am-12.45pm

OR

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays 5pm-8pm and alternate Saturday mornings 9am-12.45pm

The Trainee Evening Case Handlers will support the day teams in managing a large caseload, utilising telephony customer service, administration and organisational skills. Training and development will be provided, therefore this is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to gain legal experience within a prestigious Recoveries Services Practice.  

As the Evening case handler, your duties will include undertaking payment reviews and ensuring payments are being correctly attributed to files.

You will frequently engage with customers directly to review their current financial circumstances and agree an ongoing payment arrangement in line with customer mandates. Compliance with all relevant regulatory requirements (i.e. FCA regulations) as well as client and internal service level agreements will fall under your personal responsibility, requiring you to have excellent attention to detail and able to work collaboratively with your colleagues. 

In addition you will also be expected to:

• Be responsible and accountable for your workload including meeting internal and client SLA requirements
• Be aware of associated areas of law impacting the Unit's delivery of its service
• Recognise any potential issues in cases and refer these appropriately
• Attend and complete any training in a timely manner
• Attend internal and external meetings as required and assist in implementing changes to any Unit procedures.
• Liaise with other internal teams as appropriate
• Assist the Unit in achieving financial targets, other KPIs, management information and meeting budgets
• Support the Unit with marketing initiatives when required and collating management information

The ideal candidate will possess extensive customer service and administration experience, preferably gained from an office environment involving interaction with clients over the phone and/or face-to-face. You’ll be able to work to deadlines and have a keen eye for detail. While you won’t require a law qualification, you must be able to demonstrate an interest the field and you’ll ideally have previous work experience within a financial services or a professional services organisation.

You will also need the following skills and experience:-

• IT literate with experience of using Word, Excel and the internet
• Strong telephony experience - applicants must have the ability to deal with difficult telephone conversations with any of the key stakeholders in the recoveries process confidently and calmly and refer if appropriate
• Good written, numeracy and oral communication skills
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Ability to prioritise, be organised and efficient
• Flexibility with the capability to adapt to change, new practices and cope under pressure but with the ability to recognise when to seek assistance
• Able to integrate within a team and able to work on your own initiative
• Friendly and helpful approach

Benefits package 

Shoosmiths has an outstanding benefits package; we believe that all staff should be rewarded for their commitment to the continued success of the firm. These can include:

• A pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5.5%
• Generous life assurance cover for peace of mind, up to 8 times salary
• Up to 23 paid working days holiday per annum with the option to buy up to 8 additional days. You can choose to 'flex' twice a year - January and July
• 'Happy Birthday!' - have a free day off to celebrate and a £50 voucher to spend! (We won't take it from your annual entitlement)
• Childcare vouchers which are not subject to tax or NI
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Staff introduction bonus scheme
• Corporate discounts on a wide variety of products and services
• Discounted conveyancing and legal advice, for instance for wills and family trusts

The application process

We will aim to respond to you within 3-4 working days following your application. There will be one interview stage which will be held at our Northampton office.

Background checks

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted.  These checks will include employment references covering the last 5 years, proof of ID, proof of address covering the last 5 years, Personnel Vetting credit search (which will only highlight insolvency or County Court Judgments - should any adverse data show on the Personnel Vetting search then any offer of employment made will be withdrawn).Terrorism Check (against data supplied by the Bank of England) and a DBS check previously known as a Criminal Records check.

Shoosmiths is a committed Equal Opportunities employer promoting equality of opportunity. This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.