Legal Billing Assistant

Your new employer works for over 250 healthcare clients and over 150 social housing clients nationally and have over 230 fee earners across 4 UK offices. They have a very strong people strategy, creating a positive team culture and treating every employee as an individual. They benefit from a very low level of staff turnover, a large number of long servers and can offer a strong employer proposition that has been summarised below.

The Job

We are looking to recruit a Billing Assistant, the first objective of the Billing Assistant will be to understand the current billing approaches and to adopt these to ensure there is no disruption to the billing process as the Finance function is relocated. Thereafter we would look to make significant changes to our billing processes utilising the many options available within our new PMS.

Our clients are looking to streamline the overall invoice management process with many adopting a "no PO - no pay" approach. It is essential that our systems can satisfactorily identify these and other requirements of our clients to ensure a smooth road to payment. To facilitate these changers our billing processes require a complete review in order to keep pace with our competitors and to assist clients to become more efficient at processing invoices.

The role will be a varied one covering several aspects of the day to day running of a busy law firm including:

• generating draft bills as necessary at the start of the month and on an ad hoc basis;
• running our auto billing process and looking out for any rejections or exceptions;
• liaising with partners and fee earners to ensure the correct charge rates are allocated to the clients / matters;
• managing discounts and rebates Liaising with the fee earners to agree the amounts and then the cashiers to ensure it is paid electronically and promptly;
• maintaining a record of fixed fee matters
• ensuring time write-offs are authorised and promptly effected;
• ensuring disbursements that need to be written off are similarly authorised;
• enquiring of matter supervisors (partners and senior fee earners) with regards to old WIP and old disbursements or expenses;
• liaising with cashiers and credit control in relation to payment queries;
• producing relevant reporting for fee earners, partners and clients showing levels of billings appropriately analysed as required;
• liaising with client accounts payable as necessary;
• raising credit notes as required;
• ensuring VAT rules are correctly interpreted and applied;
• liaising with the Control function to ensure matters correctly set-up and billed on time;
• escalating any matters that may hinder the billing process;
• providing analyses as required from time to time.

Other duties

Any other duties as reasonably requested.

As part of our approach in developing staff there will be opportunities to experience other areas of work within the Finance function, shadowing staff in related areas and covering for holiday and other absences.

The introduction of the new PMS will allow for greater automation of the overall billing process and all billers will be expected to input into the process of designing efficient systems.

At month end or year end there may be a need to work beyond the standard hours and billers will be expected to arrange matters to accommodate this need.

The successful applicant will be computer literate and ideally have a good knowledge of the Elite accounting system and be fully conversant with the Solicitors' Accounts Rules and in dealing with VAT.

Candidates should ideally have:

• a minimum of 2 years' experience working in the finance department
• the ability to work under pressure;
• knowledge of e-billing systems;
• strong administration and organisational skills;
• the ability to communicate professionally at all levels within the firm;
• the ability to work calmly under pressure; and
• excellent attention to detail.

Candidates will also be expected to demonstrate that they are:

• numerate;
• professional, self motivated and able to work without direct supervision;
• able to work in a busy, professional environment;
• proactive in their approach;
• willing to learn and develop; and
• a team player who is able to motivate and work alongside others.

• salary that has been benchmarked to attract the best
• competitive benefits package
• 25 days holidays, rising to 27 on service
• various development opportunities

Brewster Partners Recruitment Group focuses on the recruitment of talent in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. If you are interested in discussing this job in more detail or any other aspect of recruitment and talent identification we would really like to hear from you. Please visit our website at for more information on Jobs or Recruitment.