Location: Birmingham, Bristol, or Leeds
This is a fantastic time to join Bevan Brittan. The firm is growing and our Business Operations Managers play a key role in supporting and driving this. There will be plenty of opportunity to make a difference for someone who is flexible, keen to learn, support and work collaboratively with Department Heads and other Business Operations Managers across our legal departments.
We have five legal departments who operate nationally, spanning offices across Bristol, London, Birmingham and Leeds. Each department is supported by a Business Operations Manager (BOM).
The role of the BOM is to:
- Provide comprehensive, operational management support to assist the Department Heads (DHs) in driving forward improvements.
- Ensuring best practice throughout the annual cycle of running of the department.
- Acting as a bridge between DH and Directors and DH and departmental partners, as well as a link to the BOMs across other departments, to ensure consistency of approach.
This role will support either the Litigation, Advisory and Regulatory department or the Employment, Pensions and Immigration department.
The role
Responsibilities
Management Support:
- Assisting with departmental Partner and fee earner meetings, e.g. diarising, preparing agenda and papers, taking minutes, circulating actions and follow-up.
- Scheduling and running bi-monthly operational Department Head meeting with other departmental BOMs.
- Maintaining an annual tracker of the key deadlines in the annual cycle of the management of the department.
- Project Management of departmental initiatives/work-streams including maintaining and updating of action registers etc.
- Supporting and coordinating the updating of department business plans, working closely with Team Heads and Partners as needed. Coordinating partners for actions and initiatives and delivery against objectives.
- Planning and delivery of department away days.
- IT kit approval administration.
Financial:
- Central filing and retrieval of all management financial information regularly used by DHs.
- Assist with budgets, e.g. pulling together statistics and compiling spreadsheets
- Basic analysis, e.g. reviewing fee earner utilisation data provided by Finance and distilling and providing top line info for DH on a weekly basis
- Monitoring KPIs
- Liaising between Finance and partners as to aged lock up. Chasing and reporting to DH.
- Streamlining the process of write-offs. Monitoring leakage as against WIP.
Risk & Best Practice
- Supporting departmental Best Practice Partner and DH.
- Monitoring departmental performance against agreed Risk and Best Practice objectives.
- Liaising with Risk & Best Practice team as required.
- Weekly chasing and reporting to enable individual analysis of partner performance
- Coordinating and ensuring delivery against audit requirements
Business Development
- Liaising with BDM team as required to develop assessments, reports and team plans.
- Coordinating and chasing up partners in relation to submissions for directories.
- Ensuring CVs / fee earners' website profiles are kept up to date.
- Maintaining and keeping up to date departmental database of marketing information for use in tenders.
Knowledge Management and Training
- Scheduling internal training with Knowledge Director and department training partner / Professional Support Lawyer (PSL).
- Logging requests for external training, monitoring spend against budget and liaising with regular external training providers regarding upcoming events.
Human Resources
- Administrative support for recruitment.
- Assisting with coordinating appraisals and objective setting.
- Administration support in relation to promotions, annual pay and bonus review.
- Operating the departmental holiday approval process.
Transformation
- Assisting with identification of transformation opportunities.
- Supporting and coordinating project work.
- Management of departmental HighQ sites.
What we are looking for from you
Key skills and experience required:
- Significant experience in a similar role, or as a senior / board level PA or management assistant
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Experience of working with highly sensitive and confidential information
- Ability to work collaboratively and efficiently with the other BOMs to ensure coordination and consistency across the legal teams
- Good knowledge of financial processes
- Demonstrable influencing skills
- Confident in having challenging conversations
- Project Management experience
- Excellent attention to detail
- Highly organised and proactive
- Willingness to travel to other office locations occasionally (as required)
- Advanced Microsoft Office Skills, particularly on Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Make a Real Impact
Bevan Brittan is a leading commercial law firm. Explore our markets and services here.
We are highly ranked across the legal directories and our 2024/25 financial results confirmed twelve years of consecutive growth.
Our Responsible Business pillars influence how we work together and motivate us to deliver meaningful outcomes for our clients and communities.
We support our people to be their best and, through our hybrid working model, we offer the flexibility to work your week in a way that suits you.
We’re looking for the best people to share in our ambition and success. Visit our Life page to discover what life at Bevan Brittan could look like for you.
