Legal Assistant

It is the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams; together we win.   As a firm we are focused on proactively building and developing diverse teams, bringing different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives together. We play to our strengths, pushing ourselves to be consistently better than yesterday and deliver amazing solutions for our clients. We empower our teams with a high degree of individual responsibility; we self-manage and encourage everyone to be responsible for their own learning, knowing it makes us even better at what we do!    

We believe in trusting our people to make the right decisions for themselves from how you dress to how, when and where you work – we focus on outputs.  

Want to find more about our amazing benefits?

It’s about more than just providing an excellent service, it’s about building friendships and long term relationships. Our residential development team are open, honest and jovial and enjoy what they do. The teams are located across 4 of our office hubs in the Midlands and sit within our infrastructure and specialist markets business unit. Although they span 4 different geographic locations it’s very much one team and they work together to provide exceptional service advising clients on both personal and business matters. Being part of a large national law firm has great benefits and means we can all collaborate with others in the firm, drawing on a breadth and depth of market and technical expertise. Neil Gosling heads the team. He has acted for the majority of the country’s top 10 national house-builders as well as for significant institutional landowners, private builders and developers. He has enviable experience in dealing with all aspects of the acquisition and disposal of consented and unconsented land, strategic land, consortium-led purchases and complex multi-phase mixed-use regeneration schemes.

The role:

We are looking for an experienced Legal Assistant to join our Residential Development superteam.

You will be responsible for providing high-level organisational and dedicated administrative support to help deliver a great service to our clients.

If you are keen to learn and have a ‘can do’ attitude we have fantastic prospects for development in this role.

Your key duties will be:

• opening new files via a case management system and preparing conveyancing paperwork
• scanning in all incoming post to the case management file
• producing standard completion letters where applicable
• receiving the file from the executives within the department prior to completion to set the matter up to complete
• preparing draft bills in readiness for completion
• dealing with the registration of the properties at the Land Registry, either electronically or manually, through the DX system of all applications for registration including dealing with any requisitions arising there from
• taking queries from clients following completion
• dealing with any necessary notices that need to be given to any third parties such as landlords
• keeping a strict diary note of deadlines and timescales whilst in control of the file
• checking the registrations on their return from HM Land Registry
• sending copies of the deeds to the clients on completion
• dealing with any client balances on the file to go to the clients
• checking files and finalising the file for closure
• assisting with admin support, when required
• managing overflow/general enquiries from clients and agents
• dealing with client requests for stored deeds

Skills and experience you will have:

• previous legal experience dealing with residential conveyancing for new build developers 
• knowledge of completion and Land Registry processes would be advantageous
• experience of working at a fast pace with a high volume workload
• confidence with IT systems to include Microsoft Word and Excel
• good basic keyboard ability

Key competencies you will need:

• the ability to process information accurately
• an organised and methodical approach to work
• the ability to work well in a team and develop good working relationships with colleagues and others
• good communication skills with the confidence to liaise openly and clearly with colleagues and clients
• the ability to produce a high standard of work, sometimes under pressure, whilst maintaining accuracy and good attention to detail
• to be able to demonstrate flexibility, initiative and confidence in your own ability

About you – you will be:

• highly enthusiastic, willing to go the extra mile and be happy to go beyond the job description
• respectful towards others and have a positive, willing and ‘can do’ attitude
• keen to learn, interested in driving your own career progression and be proactive in taking ownership of this

We embrace agile working and offer a blended approach to where and how we work.

We appreciate that people have different needs and preferences and we’re keen to be flexible, after all, we value what you do, not where you do it.

We have hubs in Birmingham, Leicester, London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Solihull, Stratford-upon-Avon and Sheffield. This role will be predominantly home based with travel as required to our Birmingham or Solihull office hub.

Please be aware, for some vacancies, where we receive high numbers of applications we may need to bring the close date forward.

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. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.