Job Title: Professional Standards & Risk – PSR Coordinator
Reports To: Client On-boarding Team Leader
Why Bates Wells?
Making a profit is core to all businesses but our goal is to combine this with a real social purpose. Our values are pivotal to us, they shape our decisions and the way we live and work.
We focus on positive social impact as much as we focus on being a successful law firm. Our top tier legal advice is coupled with a real desire to drive change and we were the first UK law firm with B Corp certification, awarded to businesses that balance purpose and profit.
Today, our clients are diverse – from corporate household names to public bodies, to start ups. We’re also the firm of choice for thousands of charities and social enterprises. We continue to lead the market we helped to shape.
Bates Wells challenges what is possible in legal expertise delivery.
The role
Bates Wells operates a centralised client and matter opening service across the firm to ensure compliance at client inception with the firm’s regulatory and statutory obligations. You will be the first point of contact for queries from staff and provide support to the PSR team who provide advice on professional standards, regulatory compliance and risk management.
Key responsibilities
You will provide a centralised client and matter inception service to clients engaging the firm. You will deal with client on-boarding and day to day general queries. You will ensure that tasks are dealt with in a timely and efficient manner. Where required, you will escalate to a relevant PSR team member.
You will maintain an up-to-date knowledge and understanding of Bates Wells’ internal policies and procedures for client inception and carry out database administration responsibilities. This will include:
Client inception
- Reviewing and processing client and matter inception documentation to ensure new clients and matters are opened in a timely and efficient manner
- Conducting electronic searches and assessing the client due diligence (CDD) / enhanced due diligence (EDD) requirements for individual clients
- Drafting appropriate client due diligence requests for the fee earners. Liaising with fee earning and support team members, as necessary.
- Triaging of general PSR queries
Anti-money laundering
- Responsible for developing and maintaining a good understanding of anti-money laundering and financial crime legislation, and a comprehensive understanding of client due diligence requirements.
- Responsible for maintaining a comprehensive understanding of how to explain and identify who an ultimate beneficial owner is for each of the firm’s client types.
- Providing guidance to staff across Bates Wells in respect of anti-money laundering and financial crime, and escalating more complex issues and queries to more senior members of the PSR team.
- Responsible for maintaining a good knowledge of potential red flags regarding the client and work types across the firm and the jurisdictions within which the firm’s clients are based.
- Carrying out client due diligence on a full range of clients (including analysing documents provided by clients and advising whether further information or enhanced due diligence is required.
- Using a number of different databases to obtain due diligence material and developing a schedule of reliable sources for CDD materials.
- Carrying out online searches of the firm’s supplier databases to identify whether a client is a politically exposed person (PEP) or special interest person (SIP), or whether they are subject to sanctions of the subject of any adverse media which could be of concern to the firm.
Conflict of Interest
- Carrying out conflicts searches using data submitted by fee earning teams, requesting further information if required and reporting back results and implementing safeguards if necessary.
- Identifying and researching potential conflict issues and escalating them to more senior members of the PSR team
- Responsible for ensuring appropriate information barriers are created, amended and maintained, whilst ensuring any issues arising out of the information barrier process are flagged to a more senior members of the PSR team and assisting in the maintenance of the firm’s information barriers register.
Specific tasks may change over time, so we’ll need you to be adaptable and flexible as we continue to meet our clients’ needs.
About you
- You will have at least 2 years’ experience working in the Risk & Compliance department of a law firm.
- You see the value in Bates Wells as a career choice and view Bates Wells as a high quality employer.
- You share our values and want to make a difference.
- You want to feel that you are a part of the Bates Wells experience and ‘belong’.
- You are not afraid to test assumptions and challenge.
- You want exposure to a variety of challenges that will allow you to innovate.
- You are technically excellent, commercially minded and have great people skills.
About us
- A one firm approach means working together and improving to achieve common goals and to provide a consistent Bates Wells experience.
- As a values-driven firm we show commitment to our clients, our people, the environment and society. We take into account the Climate Emergency and Biodiversity Crisis in developing our business strategy.
- We work with exceptional clients to offer the very best work.
- We want to have a positive impact on our people who are our greatest asset so that they can have a positive impact on others. Purpose is baked into our partnership deed.
- Looking for better ways of working is always our priority.
- We promote a strong work/life balance with 25 days holiday with the opportunity to buy more and a ‘Summer in the City’ early-Friday-finish.
- We have an agile working environment – this means you might sit next to a different colleague every day or choose to work from our rooftop garden if you are in the office. We are currently reviewing our policies to enable a hybrid model moving forward.
- Our culture encourages clear and honest dialogue and cross-team support
- The firm review salaries annually as part of the appraisal process in July of each year. However, we encourage our staff to engage with their supervisors throughout the year on feedback and objective setting.
- We recognise success and contribution at any time of the year through our Recognition Scheme
- Our benefits and wellbeing package includes firm matching pension contributions, private medical insurance plus a medical benefit cash plan, discretionary bonus arrangements, life assurance, subsidised gym memberships, lifestyle discount scheme and a firm-wide profit sharing scheme.
- Everyone gets a bonus if there is one - a proportion of the LLP profit is distributed to our people when we exceed our financial thresholds.
- We are committed to your wellbeing and offer physical and mental support in the way of subsidised gym membership, private health care and in-office Mental Health Awareness Ambassadors.
About the Professional Standards & Risk team
We are a very supportive and passionate team – our aim being to protect the firm and our colleagues’ professional integrity. We have embedded a culture of openness across our firm which means that our colleagues involve us in all manner of issues that arise throughout the course of their work. The firm has grown significantly in recent years and sees the positive benefit of investing in our team to help deliver high standards of client care, efficiencies through improved processes, centralisation of core compliance functions and the delivery of solutions to address the ever changing legal and regulatory landscape.
As a team we get an immense sense of achievement from seeing each other develop and flourish:
- sharing responsibilities on interesting firm wide projects (of which there are many);
- being generous with our time and knowledge to help other team members advance their own careers;
- exploring different career pathways that suit individuals rather than just fitting people into a defined role;
- promoting a learning culture across the firm, not just answering the questions we are asked but giving our colleagues the tools to find the answers themselves;
- showing our colleagues the real human impact of the decisions that they take and the things we ask them to do; and
- promoting our culture of openness and transparency.
Most importantly, we really enjoy our work and value each other. Whilst it might sound a cliché, we want our colleagues across the firm to find us accessible, friendly, supportive and knowledgeable. Always listening and not judging them when things go wrong.
How to find out more about us
Don’t forget to review our website (https://bateswells.co.uk/) and ask around about us to find out more and whether we’re the right fit for you.
NB We will normally have at least 2 interviews – to test your skills and competencies to work with us and to see if your values align with ours. |
