Legal Project Coordinator

Location: Belfast

Workplace: Hybrid 

The Opportunity:

To work with the Legal Project Managers, supporting on the successful delivery of tasks within both client- and internally facing projects using established and new tools and processes

Working at Baker McKenzie:

Baker McKenzie (BM) is the world’s leading law firm with offices all over the world. Our Belfast Centre is home to over 400 teammates in both legal and professional services such as finance, IT, marketing, and business support.

We offer one of the best workplace benefits packages in the business with comprehensive private health cover, income protection, life assurance and a full employee assistance plan. These and a host of other benefits make us one of the most desirable companies to work for in Belfast.

We are committed to promoting inclusion, diversity, and equity for all and are confident we can provide a career as individual and as exceptional as you.

About the team:

BM’s market-leading legal project management (“LPM”) function drives differentiation, an enhanced user experience and profit enablement on client work, collaborating closely with the other fee-earning professional units to best meet client needs. The LPM team continues to integrate more closely with our internal lawyers on the day-to-day planning, execution, and tracking of fee earning legal work as our firm keeps pace with evolving client expectations. LPM will also help BM lawyers take full advantage of the many other resources at their disposal (e.g. legal tech, Alternative Legal Services) to ensure client work is performed in the most effective, efficient, and profitable manner. Finally, LPMs will work closely with peer functions to ensure that, where feasible and beneficial, bespoke backend support that LPM has previously been asked to provide is systematized and scaled to meet the needs of a broader group of BM partners.

About the role:

As part of this role, the successful candidate will:

Responsibilities:

• Support members of the LPM team on multiple projects with competing deadlines in coordination with other LPM team members.
• Liaise with the client and the BM's client matter team, as well as BM's specialist departments and offices worldwide. 
• Perform assigned tasks with accuracy and timeliness; take responsibility for completing recurring tasks without prompting.
• Prioritize workload (seeking clarification from project leads on project priorities), anticipating and escalating any foreseeable issues as well as availability, and remain aware of dependencies. 
• Build and use charts, timelines, and other visuals effectively; suggest improvements. 
• Work with team members to implement solutions to improve processes. 
• Accurately estimate and manage time required to support coordination work. 
• Effectively and appropriately hand off work to other Professional Business Services (PBS) teams, engaging with them to clarify requirements and ensure a successful transition. 
• Support the post-matter review process for key matters and identify areas of improvement in practice area processes through discussions with project team.
• Triage help requests and raise ‘marginal’ requests with team members to determine LPM position on task involvement. 
• Identify opportunities for new service delivery and support analysis and design workshops. 
• Collate information for project updates and adapt report templates for new projects. 
• Support scope clarification and management efforts on projects 
• Identify own training needs and actively participate in training related to LPM topics. 
• Tailor and reuse existing templates and make suggestions for template improvements. 
• Contribute to BM’s Innovation Strategy; become a subject matter expert on LPM-relevant technology and standardized processes: evangelize, advise, train, apply to projects and support refinement. 
• Support implementation of existing and new technology to meet project requirements and to encourage LPM and Legal team uptake. 
• Source information at LPM request for proposals and pitches 
• Build network of professional colleagues across the range of PBS and legal functions, including Knowledge Management, Business Development, Finance, and IT and with external stakeholders 
• Offer ad hoc support and PM expertise to non-LPM initiatives.

Travel requirements 

• This role may require some short-term regional travel driven by client requirements.

Essential Criteria:

To be successful in this role you will need:

Skills and Experience:

• Project management experience (desirable)
• Understanding of/experience working in large complex organizations
• Basic understanding of relevant IT packages: e.g., Document Management Systems, Project Extranets (e.g., SharePoint/Teams) or other collaborative project management tools.
• LegalTech knowledge and interest is desirable.
• Basic knowledge of Microsoft Office (including Excel), and of financial systems and reports
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills
• Desire to work collaboratively with senior-level professionals to help them succeed in meeting their objectives.
• Ability to build matter budgets with guidance.
• Ability to work independently with a willingness to work flexibly and hands-on to achieve project objectives.
• Basic knowledge of data visualisation and associated tools (e.g., Excel charting, Tableau, PowerBI, Visio
• Ability to analyse datasets to identify trends, issues, and gaps.
• Demonstrated ability to organize and prioritize work in a dynamic and complex environment to meet deadlines and daily requirements.
• Demonstrated attention to detail to ensure quality of outputs.
• Emerging competency in continuous improvement, change management, flexible approach, and exceeding expectations.