Make a Real Impact
Bevan Brittan is a leading commercial law firm. Alongside our recognised expertise in housing, local government, and health and social care, we are specialists in the construction, energy and resource management, higher education and financial services sectors.
Supported by our valued business services professionals, our award-winning and growing legal teams provide almost 2,000 organisations with commercial, corporate, property, finance, regulatory, employment and litigation (commercial and clinical negligence) legal and advisory services.
As a responsible business, we embrace four values: Relationships, Reputation, Responsible and Results. These give us a sense of purpose. They influence the decisions we make and how we work with each other. Importantly, they motivate us to deliver meaningful outcomes for our clients and the communities that we're part of.
Consistently recognised as one of The Times Best Law Firms and highly ranked across the legal directories, we are proud of our hard-earned reputation. Our 2024/25 financial results confirmed both revenue and profit growth for a twelfth consecutive year, ensuring our ability to continue investing in our people.
Looking to the future, we're targeting ambitious growth and success. And we're looking for the best people to be part of it.
Join a team of experts and progressive thinkers
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
Work with approachable people
When we ask colleagues what makes Bevan Brittan a great place to work, the most popular thing they say is "the people". The overwhelming consensus is that we make time for each other. We welcome questions and support each other. Naturally, we look for new colleagues who align with our values.
Supported to be your best
Hybrid working
We operate a hybrid working model based on the needs of our clients, teams and people. Our core business hours are 9am - 5:15pm Monday to Friday, but we're open to our people working more flexibly around those times and welcome a conversation with you if you have any questions about this. We try to offer you the flexibility to work your week in a way that suits you.
Learning, Development & Progression
We're committed to supporting your professional and personal development needs.This means that we offer a range of tailored training courses and you will have lots of opportunity to learn from those around you. We actively encourage progression and this is reflected in our annual review and promotion processes. You will be supported by your line manager to achieve your full potential.
Wellbeing
As a Bevan Brittan employee, you'll have access to a variety of services that support your wellbeing. We've pledged our commitment to The Mindful Business Charter and lots of our people contribute to our Wellbeing Responsible Business strand, which organises an annual calendar of wellbeing events and initiatives.
Benefits
- A minimum of 25 days holiday (plus the option to buy up to an additional 5 days)
- Discretionary bonus scheme
- Generous pension scheme
- Private medical insurance through Vitality
- Biennial private health assessment through Nuffield Health
- Life assurance
- Access to Employee Assistance Programme
- Cycle to work scheme
Embracing our differences and valuing inclusion
Our shared aim is that everyone is welcome and can feel comfortable being themselves at Bevan Brittan. To support this, we actively value and promote equality, diversity and inclusion in everything that we do. You'll be empowered and supported through our employee led networks, diverse colleagues, and a broad range of firmwide initiatives.
Recognising the unique contributions that a diverse workforce can bring to our business, we encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We take great pride in being a Disability Confident Employer. If you need any adjustments throughout the recruitment process or have any questions, please get in touch with our recruitment team by emailing recruitment@bevanbrittan.com
Acting responsibly, now and for the future
To us, being a responsible business is second nature; a core part of Bevan Brittan's identity. Our colleagues are heavily involved in shaping and delivering activity across the four pillars of our Responsible Business strategy : Community Engagement; Environmental Sustainability; Equality, Diversity & Inclusion; and Wellbeing.
Our people deliver pro bono legal work for charities and not-for-profit organisations. We play an active role in our local communities and donated £100,000 across our four regional office charities last year. We are also proudly carbon neutral. We've achieved the UN's Climate Neutral Now accreditation and our environmental sustainability plan focuses on achieving our net zero carbon target by 2040.
Collectively, the four pillars ensure we look after our colleagues' wellbeing; offer an environment in which everyone can progress on merit, give something back to the communities in which we work; and protect the environment.
