Chris Jerrom

As a Divisional Secretarial Services Manager & PA at Linklaters my role is to manage the secretarial services across Corporate Division. My main duties include:

• Providing high level PA support to 2 Senior Partners in the Private Equity & Financial Sponsors division.
• Leading a team of 40 PAs/secretaries and administrative professionals ensuring they are well-supported and have the resources they need to perform their roles effectively.
  Overseeing the day-to-day operations within the division, ensuring efficiency, productivity, and compliance with firm policies and procedures.
• Ensuring high-quality administrative support is provided to the legal teams, collaborating closely to maintain service excellence.
• Implementing continuous improvement initiatives, managing training programs to develop skills and career progression of team members.
• Acting as a point of contact between secretarial staff and lawyers, fostering strong relationships and ensuring communications flow smoothly
• Responsible for managing workloads, resource allocation, and sometimes recruitment within the secretarial team.
• Conducting appraisals on a bi-annual basis.

As the Divisional Group Secretary I worked with and supported the Group Secretaries in the Division and worked closely with Head of Secretarial Services and the Divisional Group Secretaries to support the secretarial function across London. Duties:

• Managing secretarial capacity and utilisation across Corporate Division.
• Developing and encouraging teamwork and flexibility across the secretarial function to deliver effective service to our fee-earners
• Line managing and coaching our Group Secretarial team and acting as a point of escalation for the team on people-related matters
• Developing strong relationships with the Group Secretarial Partners within the division

During my time as a Group Secretary I was supporting 4 Partners in the Financial Sponsors sector and managing 10 legal secretaries, including recruitment, appraisals, mentoring & monitoring workloads.

Supporting 2 Partners and a team of 10 - 12 lawyers in the corporate department. General secretarial duties including all typing and document work, scheduling meetings, expenses, taking calls and dealing with ad hoc queries.

Supporting junior members of the team with all administrative duties including answering phones, printing, copy, scanning, expenses and day-to-day queries.