Here is a selection of vacancies from our Legal Secretary Jobs Board this month:

Corporate Legal Secretary – Howard Kennedy 
Location: London
Salary: Competitive 

Howard Kennedy is looking for a new Legal Secretary to join their Corporate Department. The successful candidate will be expected to provide first class professional secretarial and administrative support for five fee earners.

Experience of working as a Secretary within a corporate department (both contentious and non-contentious) is essential.

View the full job description here: 
https://www.institutelegalsecretaries.com/jobs/candidate/job/48685/

Last month, we looked at the etiquette involved in accompanying your boss to court. This month, we’ll have a look at what happens when you get there, what you can expect to happen and how you can help. 

Whether you’re attending court on a criminal or a civil case, one of the first things that will happen when you arrive is that your boss will have a conference with the client. In this article, however, I’m going to concentrate on what happens in civil cases, including family cases.

SecsintheCity, the UK’s #1 job site for PAs and EAs, has announced a new event for PAs and EAs – the Summer Networking Event – which will take place on 9 June 2016 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel London - The City.

The event offers PAs and EAs an opportunity to speed-network with high-profile PAs and EAs, including:
-          Jules Clark, PA to the CEO at Eversheds LLP
-          Alison Boler, PA to the SVP of Legal at Sony Music

Mark Doyle, a training expert from The Method will present a workshop on ‘Handling Difficult Situations in the Workplace’.

In addition, the event offers one-to-one CV and career advice and will include pop-up boutiques such as:
-          Jo Malone
-          Chococo
-          Moores of London
-          Little Ondine
-          Return to Glory
-          The Headshot Guy

Password security is vital security

Last month’s huge data breach at the Panamanian law firm of Mossack Fonseca – to give you an idea of its size, it was hundreds of times bigger than the material released by Wikileaks in 2010 – is an example of just how much damage a data security leak can cause. The private affairs of the firm’s clients became public property overnight, allowing the press to trace money across continents and into tax havens. 

Although the leak uncovered some pretty questionable, and possibly illegal, behaviour on the part of some of the firm’s clients, many other clients who were not doing anything wrong had their most private financial affairs opened up for the world to see. 

Vicarious simply means ‘in place of’. Vicarious liability is a legal term that refers to a kind of secondary accountability. In other words, Person A is responsible for the wrongdoings of Person B, even though Person A had no direct involvement in the offence. 

Vicarious liability is a doctrine (a belief or set of beliefs) of English tort law. In simple terms, a tort is a civil wrongdoing. It occurs when someone unjustly causes another person to suffer harm or loss. The person who commits the tortious act is the tortfeasor. 

We can use a hypothetical situation in the workplace to illustrate how this works. 

Hypothetical Case Study

Aside from the death of a loved one, divorce can be, and often is, one of the most stressful of all life’s events. It is rarely amicable, and one partner is usually hurting more than the other one. One of the biggest upsets with divorce can be the one-to-one confrontations in solicitors’ offices. These formal-type meetings tend to do more harm than good in a lot of cases. Well, what if you could cut out all those unpleasant face-to-face appointments with the future ex. Imagine if you could settle your divorce online with just a few clicks. The good news is that this will be a real option in the not-too-distant future. The online ‘digital’ divorce could become a reality as early as 2017. Legal experts expect this to be a preferred method among many divorcing couples, though not everyone welcomes the idea. 

Keep the focus on the client

“I need you to come down to court with me tomorrow.” When you hear these words from your boss, do you feel pleasant anticipation or hear the knell of doom? Although accompanying your boss or another member of the firm to court can be one of the most interesting aspects of your job, many secretaries don’t make the most of the experience because they are not sure what’s required of them, either in terms of general etiquette or in terms of the tasks they are being asked to do. Here’s a quick introductory guide to both.

The most important thing is to get clear in your own mind what your boss wants you to do. Very often s/he will ask you to come down to court purely so that you can observe the process, and see how what you are doing on a day-to-day basis is used out there in the wide world. 

If you’ve just choked on your coffee after reading the headline to this article, scoffing at the very idea of pursuing a legal career away from the big smoke of the capital, set a little time aside to consider the bigger picture here. 

Okay, so whilst an estimated one-third of the country’s solicitors are said to be working in London, this still means there are another 67% of these legal professionals in other parts of the United Kingdom. In turn, this means plenty of Legal Secretary and PA jobs for you to consider in all parts of the nation.

Here is a selection of vacancies from our Legal Secretary Jobs Board this month:

Legal PA – Morgan Spencer 
Location: Central London
Salary: £32,000 - £38,000 

Morgan Spencer is looking for a Legal PA to fill a fantastic opportunity that has become available with a prestigious London law firm. The candidate must have previous experience working within a legal environment. They will also need to show that they have worked in a PA or team support role at a senior level.

60 wpm typing speed, advanced knowledge of Microsoft programs and impeccable attention to detail are also essential.

Following changes to the stamp duty land transaction tax (SDLT) from 1 April 2016, higher rates of SDLT will apply to the purchase of additional residential properties (such as second homes and buy-to-let properties). The changes followed a surprise announcement by the Chancellor at the last budget and were passed in the Finance (No. 2) Bill 2015-16.

If at the end of a purchase a buyer owns two or more residential properties, they may be liable for a higher rate of SDLT. One of the key factors in whether extra tax is due is whether they are replacing their main residence. If the buyer has disposed of a previous main residence within 36 months of the day of the transaction, the buyer will be considered to be replacing a main residence and no extra tax will be due.