Legal Placement Sandwich Year 2019-20

Shoosmiths - Regional/National Firm of the Year Winner at the Legal Business Awards 2018.

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 Team are seeking a Trainee Case Handler on a 12 month FTC basis. The successful candidate will work with a prestigious team who have won numerous awards including achieving Tier 1 rankings in the Legal 500 in 2018.

As a Trainee Case Handler, you will undergo full training to deal with consumer debt recovery cases and utilise commercial strategies to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Following your training and development, you will be given the opportunity to be accountable for your own caseload. 

As a Trainee Case Handler, you will liaise extensively with our clients’ customers on the telephone in order to negotiate a settlement, or other suitable outcome, as well as updating clients on a regular basis. Significant attention is placed on managing the sensitive issues which are associated with recoveries of this nature, balancing the reputation of our financial services clients and Shoosmiths. Accordingly, it is a mandatory requirement that you will be required to control and manage your workload effectively and efficiently.

In order to achieve this, you will utilise the case management systems and other processes, ensuring information is kept accurate and up-to-date. Furthermore, you’ll be accountable for your workload ensuring targets, KPIs and internal and client SLAs are met.

Throughout your initial few months, you will attend training sessions to develop your knowledge of the litigation and debt recovery process that impact the team’s delivery of its service, which will better equip you to identify any potential issues within cases and refer these on accordingly. In addition, you will attend both internal and external meetings to assist in implementing changes to any relevant procedures.

The ideal candidate would have preferably worked in an office environment dealing with a high volume of work and have excellent communication, mediation and negotiation skills. Furthermore, you will ideally have experience working in a law firm, financial services or professional services organisation. Previous litigation experience would be beneficial, but not essential as training will be provided.

Essential knowledge & competencies:

• Excellent customer service expertise
• Confident and professional telephone manner
• Strong negotiation and mediation abilities
• Good written, numeracy and oral communication skills.
• Accuracy and attention to detail.
• IT literate including sound knowledge of Word, Excel and the internet.
• 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.

The application process

We will aim to respond to you within 3-4 working days following your application. If successful, you will be invited to interview which will be a one-stage process held at our Manchester 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.