Legal Team

We are looking for an Operations Support Manager to help us optimise the work of our Legal & Company Secretariat team.

You will be a key member of the Legal & Company Secretariat team with line management responsibility presently for 1 team member.

Your role will be to lead/manage the administrative/support services that are required for the Legal & Company Secretariat team to perform at maximum productivity, to undertake such services where these are not the responsible of your direct report and to continuously improve how such services are provided.

You will be responsible for:

- Supporting the induction of new team members, maintaining a folder of up-to-date Job Descriptions for all team members and supporting other process for new starters and leavers (including non-executive directors)
- Ensuring that the Legal Team and Company Secretariat team is aware of, and follows, all Costain policies, processes and governance requirements
- Responsible for advising on Costain Governance policies/processes (and for supporting the regular review/continuous improvement of such policies/processes where owned by the Legal & Company Secretariat team)
- Supporting the allocation of work to the Costain Legal Team (working with the Deputy General Counsel), using technical knowledge to provide information/advice to best enable service standards to be met, including logging all material legal advices in the specified Costain system
- In support of the Legal team, processing and maintaining instructions to external lawyers, obtaining quotes, preparing correspondence and filing same, promptly and to a high standard.
- Providing operational support to the Legal & Company Secretariat Team to ensure maximum productivity (including in connection with process changes, technology adoption, and cross-team collaboration; L&D; annual practising certificate renewals; etc).
- Where requested, managing the process for execution of legal documents
- Responsible for management of all Legal & Company Secretariat team documents on the Costain intranet and management system
- Responsible for all financial and contract management activities in relation to the supply chain that supports the Legal & Company Secretariat Team (including continuous improvement of the billing/invoicing process, creating/monitoring Purchase Orders, receipting and accruals, etc).
- Creating and maintaining the Agreements/Contracts Register for Costain
- Carrying out ad-hoc Company Secretariat tasks (which may include: proof-reading decision papers; distributing meeting packs; setting meeting series for future years[1]; etc)
- Identifying opportunities to reduce costs and identifying solutions/trouble-shooting to support the maximum efficiency of the Legal & Company Secretary Team
- Liaising/interfacing with other Costain functions in relation to the role/purpose/ambit of the Legal & Company Secretariat team, to ensure maximum productivity of such team
- Supervise and manage the Assistant Administrator in connection with all tasks undertaken by him/her under his/her Job Description, to ensure a prompt and high standard service.
- Responsible for coordinating and updating the Legal & Company Secretariat team's input to the Costain Risk Register (for those risks owned by the Legal & Company Secretariat team), monitoring risk mitigation measures and acting as first point of contact for queries on same.
- Role modelling Costain's values and behaviours in your day-to-day activities
- Working with the General Counsel/Company Secretary, Deputy Company Secretary, Deputy General Counsel and Divisional Legal Leads to ensure the highest standard of integrity throughout the Group and a One Costain culture to maximise all opportunities and mitigate all risks
- [over time] Undertaking basic legal and/or company secretariat tasks under supervision

**About You**

**Essential**
- Experience of working in a team coordination role, preferably within a legal or fast-paced/high-pressure commercial environment across a team of lawyers
- Able to optimise and manage billing processes
- Able to work within standardised document control methods
- Able to successfully implement organisational change
- Able to efficiently manage (and deliver) discrete projects
- Able to identify and promote behaviours of a high performing team
- Excellent communication (written and verbal), facilitation and decision-making skills
- Excellent IT skills
- Ability to manage competing priorities to agreed deadlines without any compromise to work quality and working with minimal supervision
- Ability to evaluate decisions of others in detail ensuring all relevant perspectives and impacts have been considered
- Able to produce and present high quality documents and reports to a variety of audiences, including internal stakeholders at various levels in Costain
- Able to handle sensitive issues with discretion and diplomacy
- Ability to work within a team, anticipating their needs and solve problems quickly
- Numerical and analytical skills sufficient to deal with a monthly external legal spend between more than 10+ Team members of £100,000 across a number of files
- Able to work effectively in a matrix organisational structure

**Desirable**
- Demonstrable working knowledge of the markets and sectors in which Costain operates
- Desire for further development as a paralegal or equivalent or company secretariat professional
- High Performing Team Behaviours
- Acting as Owners - feeling and acting empowered to drive our work forward and make the best decisions for our future
- Using Curiosity to grow our business -being excited, connected and integral to growing and developing what we offer and how we deliver it.
- Having an Ambition for Costain- Delivering your part in ensuring Costain is a success and realises its potential to become a leader across our fields of expertise.
- Using Inclusion to encourage collaboration -Working together to deliver our work - as a close-knit community that is built on trust, equity and positive approaches.
- Bringing Clarity and focus to what we do -Challenging ourselves to remain clear and focused to ensure we land our work in the most effective, consistent ways possible.

**About Costain**

Costain helps to improve people's lives with integrated, leading edge, smart infrastructure solutions across the UK's energy, water, transportation and defence markets. We help our clients improve their business performance by increasing capacity, improving customer service, safeguarding security, enhancing resilience, decarbonising and delivering increased efficiency. Our vision is to be the UK's leading smart infrastructure solutions company. We will achieve this by focusing on blue chip clients whose major spending plans are underpinned by strategic national needs, regulatory commitments, legislation or essential performance requirements. We offer our clients leading edge solutions that are digitally optimised through the following five services which cover the whole lifecycle of their assets: future-shaping strategic consultancy; consultancy and advisory; digital technology solutions; asset optimisation and complex programme delivery. Our culture and values underpin everything we do.

We welcome all applicants regardless of age, race, faith, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, socioeconomic background and physical or neurological disabilities.

We welcome you to ask about the flexibility you need for dynamic working. Such as, working part-time, remote working, or compressed hours. In return, we will explore what is possible.

To find out more about our Inclusion strategy, please visit our ED&I page:
**Right to Work & Security Checks**

Understandably given the nature of our business, everyone who is employed at Costain must undergo thorough referencing checks. We will need different information depending on the job we have offered you. For all roles, we'll carry out a criminal record check and we'll ask to see evidence that you have the legal right to work in the UK.

For some of our roles, you may be required to obtain and maintain security clearance of at least Security Check level (or SC clearance). To satisfy the requirements, you will need to have been a legal UK resident for a minimum of 5 years and have successfully complete all stages of the vetting process.

**Closing date**

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer.

It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.

For more details please go to the Disability Confident website:
LI-CS1