The GPS Legal team is expert at placing high calibre personal assistant, secretarial and support staff within the top law firms in the UK. Our clients are medium to large sized international and magic circle corporate law practices based in the City, Docklands and London’s West End. With preferred supplier agreements in place with many leading legal firms, we have an excellent understanding of their needs and expectations.
As an integral part of our service the GPS Legal Division uses a combination of recruitment methods to enable us to short list the most suitable candidates for a given role. These include advertising on job boards, referrals, networking and, especially for senior and specialist positions, search techniques. All short listed candidates are interviewed, skills assessed and referenced before we present them to our clients.
Positions
We have expertise in filling permanent, temporary and contract positions including:
office juniors, administrators, receptionists/front office staff/customer service, legal PAs from trainee to senior level, legal secretaries, HR officers and office/department managers.
The legal departments we supply include: corporate, employment/benefits/pensions, commercial, finance/banking/tax, international capital markets, litigation/dispute resolution, private client, real estate/property – commercial and residential, pro bono, immigration and in-house legal departments within other companies.
Our Candidates
Legal secretaries and PAs today are expected to be very proactive and involved in extensive client liaison, business development and marketing. Organising meetings, travel and diaries is an important part of the role, along with some typing and document work.
Candidates do not necessarily need to have a legal background to be a legal PA, as long as they have transferable skills gained with corporate organisations such as banks/finance/insurance companies. Ideal qualifications include ILEX or equivalent legal secretary qualifications and Pitmans/OCR secretarial qualifications.
Our Selection Process
We use the latest online skills assessments to establish a candidate’s level on all MS packages, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, as well as typing speeds/accuracy, data entry speeds/accuracy (numeric and alphanumeric). The test package that we use can be altered to allow us to make the tests bespoke to a particular client.
We test candidates’ spelling, comprehension, attention to detail and numerical ability. We also provide guidance and coaching to candidates for competency based interviews.