Client Finance Administrator

Birketts is a full service, UK Top 50 law firm. With a heritage spanning 160 years, we have more than 700 lawyers and legal professionals based in Bristol, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, London, Norwich and Sevenoaks. We advise businesses, government and public sector organisations and individuals in the UK and internationally across four principal practice groups: property, corporate services, litigation and private client advisory.

We are defined by our Next Level Law proposition. We work with our clients as a proactive partner, horizon scanning and thinking ahead to the changes, challenges or opportunities that they may face.

Next Level Law is also applied to our people. Our collegiate culture means everyone is encouraged to achieve their next level in everything they do.  RollOnFriday recently ranked us as the 5th best law firm to work at in 2024.

With our ambition to succeed, comes a strong desire to make a positive contribution to the communities we serve, and we are committed to delivering the objectives set out in our ESG strategy. Diversity plays an integral part in all that we do, with female partners comprising 40% of our partnership.

Birketts is now recruiting for an ambitious, driven and forward thinking Client Finance  and Legal Administrator Assistant to come and join our growing team in our  modern and spacious Norwich office. You will join a highly successful Real Estate Finance team who have nationwide clients throughout the UK and handle commercial, mixed use and residential buy to let property transactions. 

To work as part of the Real Estate Finance team in Norwich to provide professional, high level finance administration support.

• Providing financial administrative support, ensuring compliance with legal, firm wide and practice group specific policies and procedures
• Preparation of reports for both internal and external processes.
• Producing and processing invoices (including write off and invoice narratives) and issuing to clients
• Arranging payment of third party disbursements
• Reconciling ledgers and returning funds to clients
• Generating regular credit control reminder letters, emails and statements to clients
• Liaising with client by email, letter and telephone in a timely and professional manner regarding unpaid and outstanding debts
• Arranging aged debt meetings providing proactive assistance in order to resolve issues and speed up the payment process
• Keeping accurate and up to date records of all debt, ensuring that items are followed up and escalated to the central credit control officer at the appropriate point in time
• Keeping the team leader up to date with any potential issues with a client's ability to settle bills
• Resolving queries both internally and externally with regards recent and outstanding invoices and reports
• Actively work with fee earners to close inactive or dormant matters and return client balances
• Working alongside team leaders to conduct quarterly matter summery reviews and ensuring all action points are dealt with in a timely fashion.
• General administrative support to the wider team

Professional Skills:

• Attention to detail and comfortable with numbers
• To immediately clarify instructions from fee earners should they be unclear or if deadlines are not made explicit
• To respond to internal and external telephone and email enquiries, regarding invoices and finance, politely and professionally, logging information appropriately and accurately
• Team player
• Excellent communication skills
• Excel and Outlook experience essential

General Approach

• To show a positive, collaborative approach and interest in the work that your fee earners are undertaking;
• Show initiative when responding to queries and actively try to seek solutions to problems;
• To support and build working relationships with the REFN team and to actively work for the interests of the whole team, specifically regarding finance systems and finance administration;  
•    To support and build working relationships with your colleagues in the secretarial and Accounts.

This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of a dynamic and growing team dealing with high quality and varied work.

We are looking for:

• A team player with administration experience
• Proven experience of working in a finance / credit control capacity  
• Excellent written and verbal communications and ability to communicate effectively with a broad range of individuals
• Excellent IT skills, including Outlook, Word and Excel
• Positive and enthusiastic approach to team work
• Adaptable and flexible
• Self-motivated, ability to use initiative and provide pro-active support to fee-earners
• Ability to pay attention to detail and check own work
• Reliable and well organised
• Ability to remain calm and work under pressure to meet strict deadlines
• Commitment to ongoing learning and development

At Birketts, our culture is driven by ambition and a commitment to positively impact all the communities we serve. We are dedicated to the success, development, and wellbeing of our colleagues, helping them achieve their goals and seize the opportunities that come with our growth. Alongside a flexible and inclusive work environment, we offer the following core benefits:

• 25 days holiday (FTE) plus Bank Holidays 
• Long Service holiday award – 1 extra week every 10 years continuous service
• Private Healthcare with BUPA (offered after probation is passed)
• Scottish Widows Pension Scheme (5% employer / 5% Employee)
• Staff Profit Share and Individual Performance Bonus Scheme 
• Salary sacrifice (Pensions, Staff Profit Share)
• Life Assurance - 4 x salary / Permanent Health Insurance
• Paid CSR Day
• Enhanced Maternity/Paternity Leave
• Subsidised gym membership
• Electric car scheme
• Agile/Hybrid Working Policy
• Dress for your Day Policy

https://www.birketts.co.uk/recognition-reward-benefits/

Birketts is a flexible business which has embraced a hybrid working model where our colleagues enjoy a mix of home and office working. We welcome applications from people looking for flexible, agile, and part-time roles and we are happy to explore your preferred working patterns as part of your application. 

Please note that this job profile is not an exhaustive list of duties but merely an outline of the key components of the role. You may be required by your line manager to take on additional responsibilities when requested.

Birketts is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our policy is unequivocal: we do not tolerate discrimination based on age, disability, sex, race, religion or belief, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, or sexual orientation.

We pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation that actively promotes equality of opportunity for all, valuing the right mix of talent, skills, and potential. We welcome applications from a diverse range of candidates, and selection for roles is based solely on individual merit.