Career Advice

TotallyLegal - the UK’s leading job board for legal professionals - has launched its annual salary survey and wants to hear the details of your daily working lives.

The results of the survey will detail the average salaries of Legal PAs and Secretaries across the UK, revealing whether you are adequately rewarded for your efforts or could be earning more elsewhere.

Last year, Legal PAs in our audience reported average salaries of £32,619, while Legal Secretaries took home £34,615.

More broadly, the results of last year’s survey - compiled into a comprehensive Audience Insight Report - revealed that, despite being a high profile issue, the gender pay gap continued to widen within the legal profession.

There has been a real shift over the past couple of years when it comes to preparing for an interview. Relying on your skillset and experience to speak for themselves just isn’t enough for Hiring Managers anymore, particularly when it comes to senior-level PA and EA interviews.

Not only is the market at this level incredibly competitive, but the senior stakeholders these roles support have very high expectations. Therefore, you will need to be extremely prepared for your interview and able to articulate and highlight what sets you apart from the other candidates that will be going through the same interview process.

To find out what gives certain candidates ‘the edge’ in an interview, I recently spoke to some of the top PA and Secretarial Services Managers in my network who are responsible for hiring senior-level PAs and EAs.

The term ‘business support’ can be quite a broad term but in general terms, jobs that fall under the category ‘business support’ are roles that provide administrative support to a business. Typical roles include; PA, Secretary, EA, Team Leader and Secretarial Manager.

A career in Business Support requires a large variety of transferrable skills that, if used wisely, can open your door to pretty much anything. Here is a breakdown of some of the typical roles we recruit for in Business Support and how these job roles can help you progress your career.

Admin / Office Support / Office Administrator

Many fields of work are competitive, attracting far more candidates for every open position than some might believe. Law firms receive large quantities of applications for every role advertised. Narrowing the field by hand could be an almost insurmountable task. Reading every application takes time and can result in missing some of the best candidates.

Hence why law firms often test their candidates. This is a far faster method in finding candidates who can do the job required of them. But no fear, there are just as many benefits to a candidate as there are to the employer.

Which tests might you need to complete?

There are two broad types of tests that could be used when recruiting for a legal role:

Thousands of people are working as Paralegals without realising it. How do you find out if you are one of them – and what you should do?

Many people are working within a company performing certain tasks day in, day out, not realizing that what they are doing may class them as a “Paralegal”.

Why should this matter? Why should you be “pigeon-holed”?

In this current climate, giving yourself a lift up the ladder can help your career and certainly your status within an organization.

The role of legal secretaries has changed over the years, and with technological advances and increasing pressures on legal firms to cut costs, the role of the legal secretary is becoming more important than ever. Legal secretaries now have a much broader skillset, and are often key to streamlining processes and saving costs, making them an integral asset to any legal firm. 

In this blog, Faith Kelly, legal recruitment specialist at Sellick Partnership, explores what makes legal secretaries so important, and why they are still a much needed support network for successful lawyers. 

Much more than just a secretary  

A career as a virtual assistant is one that requires an entrepreneurial spirit, patience and expertise in a specific field. If you are thinking about becoming a legal virtual assistant, you must be prepared to handle a wide range of tasks from a remote location. With the right client, the work of a virtual assistant can be fulfilling, while providing great flexibility during the workday. 

What Is a Legal Virtual Assistant? 

When looking for work as a Legal Secretary, one of the first things that we advise our Members to do is to ensure their CVs are tailored for Legal Secretary positions. We receive many CVs from people who want help in securing employment and we often notice that people are not including the information that recruiters need to see.

Your CV is your first impression on a potential employer so it is essential that you get it right. Recruiters sometimes receive a great deal of applications for an advertised vacancy, so your CV needs to stand out and highlight your Legal Secretary skills.

As part of your job search and to ensure you secure interviews, you should get into the habit of submitting a covering letter alongside your CV, even if is not a requirement. A covering letter is a great opportunity to showcase your relevant skills and attributes in more detail. Today we will share with you our step by step guide on a successful covering letter.

So you’ve perfected your CV, you’ve trawled through the job boards and found the best positions, you’ve sent in your applications after painstakingly rewriting your covering letter multiple times...the list goes on. Lo and behold, you’ve secured an interview. Congratulations! That is fantastic news.

As the interview date approaches, however, your initial excitement may start to give way to some of those pesky interview nerves. This is entirely normal, but why does it happen? Are you overthinking it, perhaps? Maybe you’re desperate to impress your future boss, or you want to prove yourself to your family? Whatever is playing on your mind, you won’t be the only one to have felt like this before an interview.