Anna Korsoff
HR Coordinator, Bird & Bird
Precise, reliable and flexible.
These are the essential qualities of a good Legal PA. You also need to have good skills in languages because many times assistants conduct a final check for legal documents before sending them out.Today I work as a HR Coordinator, but before joining our HR team I worked as a Legal PA for six lawyers in our Dispute Resolution team for five and a half years - after graduating from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. I have a Bachelor's Degree from the Degree Programme for Multilingual Management Assistants. I've always been interested in languages and internationality, which is something that brought me here as well.
Our assistants get to be involved in the work of our lawyers in a fundamental manner as far as it's possible without having a law degree. This means that the work varies from drafting and filing documents to calendar management and organising trainings. In addition I have attended a working group developing assistants' work flow and collaboration across practice areas.
For assistants there's no typical work day because you get to do such a plethora of different tasks in this role. You are allowed to grasp new challenges and develop your own work if you so wish. I can't imagine getting bored around here.
What I like the most here, however, are the people. You can hear loud laughter from the corridors almost every day. People seem to be at ease around here. You can be yourself no matter who you are. That's something one cannot take for granted.