Our client, a medium sized London firm is seeking a Governance and Risk Analyst role in Operations. This is hybrid working and they are open to someone working from their Birmingham on London office depending on location.
The Governance and Risk (G&R) team is responsible for the development and maintenance of effective risk management and compliance standards at the firm. They work closely with both legal and business service divisions through heads of division, directors of service and compliance champions across the firm's five offices to manage quality, embed risk management, compliance and continuous improvement to aid delivery of an excellent client experience.
G&R's role is to achieve compliance with the requirements of the SRA and the ICO, and to maintain the firm's ISO accreditations. The team has seven members and is split into two teams the Operations Team - dealing with the day to day queries and information security and the Compliance & Quality Team dealing with complex conduct queries, development of policy, managing the firm's insurances/ circumstances and claims and the running of the quality management system.
The Role and Responsibilities
This is a hands-on role as a member of the busy Governance and Risk (G&R) team who are responsible for the development and maintenance of effective risk management and compliance standards at the firm. The primary focus of this role will be responding to routine risk & compliance queries, recording on spreadsheets the responses to queries and incidents, and using spreadsheets to produce statistics and trends reports.
The Analyst will also assist the Operations Team to ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ICO and for dealing with data protection, subject access and other requests under the legislation and information security.
Training for this role is provided to the Analyst by the G&R team. At least 80% of the training will be on the job so that will be learning whilst undertaking tasks.
The G&R team has 13 members and with two teams:
- The Operations Team - deal with the G&R inbox that receives a wide range of compliance queries on a daily basis as well as managing our information security management system.
- The Compliance & Quality team - deal with complex compliance queries, development of policy, managing insurance, dealing with claims and circumstances, and running the quality management system.
G&R engage with both the firm's legal and business service divisions, across our five offices, to promote the benefits of good risk management, drive continuous improvement to enhance the client experience and ensure compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations.
The analyst will report to the Governance & Risk Head of Operations.
Main Duties and Responsibilities:
- Research and respond to legal compliance queries on a range of topics such as SRA compliance, including conflicts and anti-money laundering, information security incidents and data breaches, and complaints
- Log, track and monitor queries received, ensuring they are resolved in a timely manner
- Assist with subject access and data deletion requests
- After full training, deliver compliance training to new joiners, those returning from long term leave, and on an ad hoc basis when training on a G&R topic is required
- Assist with preparing reports and papers for various committees
- Assist with the organisation of external audits and take part in these as needed
- Carry out planned internal audits (training will be given) for the firm's accreditations and monitor the completion of corrective actions
- Attend legal divisional meetings to report on governance and risk issues
- Work with our divisional compliance champions to gain an understanding of the work of the legal and business service divisions and promote good governance & risk management
- Assist with drafting new and updating current policies and procedures
- Suggest, log and monitor improvements
- Undertake horizon scanning for any new developments in the G&R sphere
- Creating and circulating compliance alerts and updates
- Assisting with firmwide projects
Skills and Experience
- Educated to degree standard or equivalent work experience
- Experience of working in a law firm would be useful as would knowledge of, or willingness to acquire it, the requirements of the SRA Handbook, SRA Code of Conduct and AML Regulations
- Show an understanding of current compliance topics
- The ability to work calmly under pressure, juggle deadlines and manage the expectations of internal clients
- Advanced skills in Microsoft Excel (including use of formulae and pivot tables) and data manipulation
- Be able to tailor communications to different audiences
- A willingness to learn about new subject areas and new skills
- Demonstrable experience of working in a team
- Commitment to meeting consistently high standards whilst ensuring attention to detail
- A self-motivated proactive approach and the ability to manage your own workload
- A willingness to share ideas and suggest improvements
- A willingness to travel to other offices as needed