Junior Company Secretary

Location:

Belfast

Workplace:

Hybrid

The opportunity:

The role of Junior Company Secretary is an exciting opportunity for someone with a genuine interest in pursuing a career as a Company Secretary within a professional service setting to work directly with some of the world's largest clients to build your skills as part of an award winning Firm. This role would ideally suit a candidate who has or is working towards membership of the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland. Relevant experience is preferred but is not necessary.

The role of Junior Company Secretary will position you within our Global Corporate Maintenance Solutions ("GCMS") team based in Belfast. The GCMS service was established in 2015 as an innovative way to help clients coordinate and monitor the performance of their essential corporate maintenance obligations centrally and to maintain accurate and up-to-date corporate records for their global entities. In recent years, the GCMS service offering has expanded into co-ordinating large scale multi-jurisdictional corporate changes for our clients and providing minute taking support to UK Boards and Committees. 

To help support our expanding service offering and rapidly increasing number of global clients, we are looking for a Junior Company Secretary to join our highly-regarded team at Baker McKenzie Global Services, Belfast.

Working at Baker McKenzie:

Baker McKenzie is the world’s leading law firm with offices all over the world. Our Belfast Centre is home to over 400 colleagues in both legal and professional services.

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 role:

As part of this role, the successful candidate will:

Responsibilities:

• Act as a key client contact on GCMS projects and be responsible for managing the client relationship.
• Develop, populate, and maintain corporate information and documents on our legal entity management system, BM Online and be responsible for quality.
• Track and monitor the updating of compliance trackers, escalate any upcoming or lapsed deadlines to the client and lead associate as appropriate.
• Review draft documents prepared by local counsel offices, making any necessary updates to final drafts ahead of circulation to the client.
• Act as central point of contact for our clients and be responsive to client requests. 
• Provide minute taking support as required.
• Project manage the onboarding process for new GCMS clients.
• Project manage large scale multi-jurisdictional corporate changes such as director changes, powers of attorney, incorporations, bank signatory changes, registered office address and name changes.
• Work with local legal experts to provide clients with notifications of changes to company law, which affect corporate maintenance obligations.
• Develop and maintain corporate secretarial and governance know-how.
• Work with our lead Baker McKenzie offices globally to review and advise on draft and final client invoices.
• Assist with preparations for quarterly/bi-annual or annual client review calls and client visits, and in answering client queries about the GCMS retainers, scope of services, and in general, to build lasting relationships with client contacts.
• Contribute to pitches and client proposals and assisting senior management with demonstrations and introducing clients to our service offering.

Skills and Experience:

• Graduate (2:1 preferred).
• Membership of the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland or working towards becoming a Chartered Company Secretary.
• Previous professional services sector experience preferred however, applicants with relevant transferrable skills will be considered.
• Advanced in Microsoft Office applications (Intermediate Excel and Word is essential).
• Strong technical skills (experience of SharePoint and other company secretarial software is an advantage).
• A positive team member and active contributor in a team environment.
• Excellent organisational, prioritisation and problem-solving skills.
• Confidence to liaise with people at all levels of the firm.
• Exceptional attention to detail is a must.
• Manages multiple work tasks, prioritizes time and meets deadlines and proposes solutions where conflicts exist.