Office Assistant

Start date: Immediate

Starting Salary: £29,666 + benefits

Location: Gray’s Inn, Central London

Reporting to: Practice Operations Director

Overview

Role summary:
We are excited to be recruiting for an Office Assistant to join our Administration Team. We are looking for an enthusiastic, organised, and proactive individual who enjoys being part of a team. Gatehouse Chambers is a dynamic, fast-paced, and friendly organisation, and our staff team take pride in delivering an excellent service to our barristers and clients.

What matters most to us is finding the right individual with the skills, attitude, and determination to thrive. This is a fast-paced role which is integral to supporting our barristers and maintaining the quality service we provide to our clients. We are looking for a collaborative team player who performs well under pressure and contributes meaningfully to the running of chambers.

About us:
We are a modern, leading set of barristers’ chambers, specialising in commercial, construction, property, and insurance law. Our team consists of over one hundred barristers supported by a dedicated team of approximately thirty-five members of staff. Our working environment is enhanced by our award-winning premises, having been named ‘Best Chambers for Facilities’ in the Legal Cheek Awards in 2024 and 2025.

At Gatehouse Chambers, we foster a supportive, inclusive, and friendly culture where everyone feels valued for their contribution. We are committed to investing in training and wellbeing initiatives, empowering our colleagues to thrive.

Our benefits include 22 days’ holiday and extra discretionary days, in addition to statutory bank holidays. We offer an interest free travel loan (after successful completion of probation), Bike to Work Scheme, Electric Car Scheme and 5% pension contribution after 3 months.

Gatehouse Chambers’ offices are located at Gray’s Inn. Please refer to our website for further details on https://gatehouselaw.co.uk/.

Hours:
This is a full-time, chambers-based role operating from Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 6.00pm on a rota.

Responsibilities
•    Preparing electronic bundles in line with case requirements and deadlines
•    Assisting barristers in taking their papers and materials to and from court
•    Lodging bundles and other legal documents at court
•    Sorting and distributing incoming post to the appropriate recipients and managing outgoing post
•    Booking passenger cars or couriers as required
•    Printing and scanning large volumes of paperwork in an accurate and timely manner
•    Setting up meeting rooms to specified formats for internal meetings and external events; including moving furniture
•    Providing cover for reception and answering incoming calls professionally
•    Ensuring communal areas, including barristers’ corridors, are kept tidy and well-maintained
•    Archiving files and preparing boxes for storage
•    Carrying out general external messenger duties
•    Providing administrative support for mediations and other evening events
•    Assisting with general ad-hoc office tasks, including stationery supplies

Please note that this is a physical role and some days you will be on your feet all day. The job involves a reasonable amount of lifting of boxes, pushing trolleys and setting up rooms. Training on manual lifting will be provided. However, it is important to stress that this is an essential part of the job.

Desirable experience
•    Proficient in Microsoft Office, including Outlook, Excel and Word
•    Experience utilising Lex Chambers Management software and Adobe (desirable but not essential)

Personal attributes and key skills
•    Excellent organisational skills to manage competing priorities and meet time sensitive deadlines
•    Good interpersonal and written/oral communication skills, with the confidence to liaise with colleagues, clients and external stakeholders
•    Professional telephone manner
•    Ability to be self-sufficient as well as working as part of a team
•    Attention to detail, with well-developed administrative and IT skills
•    Discretion when dealing with confidential matters
•    Enthusiasm, energy, and resilience in a demanding environment
•    Ability to learn at a fast pace
•    A team-orientated and ‘can do’ attitude to support colleagues across chambers
•    A sense of humour

How to apply
To apply for this role, please submit your application on this application page or alternatively, please visit our website for further details on www.gatehouselaw.co.uk.

Candidates should submit their application form as indicated by 11.59pm on Sunday 28 September 2025. Please note that CVs will not be considered.

The interview process will take place in late September, and the successful candidate will ideally commence this role no later than October 2025.

For any queries, please contact our Head of HR, Aphrodite Maratheftis, on 020 7242 2523 or email jobs@gatehouselaw.co.uk. 

Gatehouse Chambers is an equal opportunities employer, and we particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented in the legal profession. Candidates including persons with ‘invisible’ disabilities will be offered reasonable adjustments, and we welcome application from neurodiverse and disabled candidates. Further details can be found on our website on https://gatehouselaw.co.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/.

 
Office Assistant - Key Competencies 

Knowledge

Market

•    An ability to build up a knowledge of the professional environment in which we work, and the legal market more widely
•    An ability to develop an understanding of legal terminology and the Courts’ system

Technical

•    An ability to build up a knowledge of Lex (our case management system) and use it effectively
•    Experience of Outlook, Excel and Word
•    Ability to develop skills in placing orders for stationery and other items, and checking stock

Skills
Personal effectiveness

•    Ability to balance short and longer term priorities
•    Evidence of being responsive to colleagues’ and clients’ varied needs, and to be welcoming and friendly
•    Attention to detail and service delivery
•    Commitment to excellence in whatever you do
•    Ability to build and develop new relationships
•    A resilience to keep going, and to stay calm, even when things are challenging
•    An ability to manage the many and varied physical tasks associated with the job

Office skills

•    Demonstrate the ability to be creative about new ideas, not stifled by rules and traditions
•    Evidence of ability to write at a high level of accuracy and persuasion
•    Evidence of ability to be consistently accurate and efficient 

Team engagement

•    Ability to work with all team colleagues and barristers effectively
•    Ability to communicate effectively
•    Ability to support and guide others where necessary

Behaviours      
•    Evidence of being a good communicator who shares knowledge
•    Evidence of being a collaborative team player who leads by example
•    Evidence of drive and resilience and an ability to provide practical solutions to problems
•    A commitment to personal development
•    Value fit with Gatehouse Chambers and its Mission Statement
 

Staff Team Mission Statement

At Gatehouse Chambers the staff team are all committed to:

1.    Identifying and meeting our clients’ needs (whether they are internal or external clients) and providing standards of excellence in the service provided to all those with whom we come into contact.

2.    Enabling members to realise their practice aspirations – the type and mix of work/clients, income, appointments, balance of professional and private life. Achieved by:

•    Relationship building
•    Spotting and pursuing opportunities for individual members and groups of members
•    Active handling and pro-active management of members’ diaries
•    Ensuring all practice management staff understand members’ aspirations and are able to put them into effect
•    Delivering excellent client care to members’ clients
•    Profile-raising and identifying marketing opportunities

3.Ensuring that each member receives excellent leadership and professional support and advice in organising their professional life.
4.    Sharing a commitment to learning and developing ourselves and one another.
5.    Working together collaboratively with members and with each other to achieve Gatehouse Chambers’ goals; understanding and respect for each other.
6.    Working hard and having fun!

Updated August 2021 

Gatehouse Chambers Charter Inclusive Culture and Practice

Our organisation
•    Recognises the role all organisations can play in challenging inequalities, and the delivery of antidiscriminatory practices for the benefit of all and in particular under- represented or disadvantaged groups and individuals.
•    Commits to ensuring an inclusive, welcoming and safe place for all regardless of any individual’s characteristics, identity, background and/or range of experiences including but not limited to race, gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, age, neurodiversity, disability, religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership, socio-economic and/or educational background (whether protected under the Equality Act 2010 or not) (“all Characteristics”).
•    Commits to taking a lead in influencing positive change within our organisation, in our profession and more widely. In doing so, acknowledges its role as a part of the administration of justice and the provision of legal services to the public.
•    Recognises the need, as proactive allies, to create and maintain an accepting environment welcoming colleagues and clients regardless of their Characteristics.
•    Ensures our recruitment, selection and promotional criteria, policies and materials are designed to be explicitly inclusive and encouraging to those from under-represented and/or disadvantaged groups and to reduce the risk of bias (conscious or unconscious).
•    Promotes diversity of leadership and representation throughout our organisation.
•    Acknowledges the ongoing under-representation of various groups in the Bar community at all levels and the need to address recruitment, retention and progression.

Our organisation pledges to promote inclusion and positive change by: 
1.    Having one named member of our senior leadership team/ management committee who is accountable for each of (i) sex and gender diversity and inclusion, (ii) race and religious equality and inclusion and (iii) ensuring the freedom, dignity and inclusion of people who are neurodiverse and/or with disabilities within and dealing with our organisation.
2.    Auditing and/or considering (on an annual basis) the differential outcomes for different groups at all levels of the organisation to identify barriers to equality based on any Characteristics.
3.    Developing, regularly reviewing and maintaining an inclusion and equality action plan to achieve equality and address identified barriers (including but not limited to specific objectives to address barriers related to sex and gender, race and religion, and neurodiversity or disability) and socio-economic and/or educational backgrounds at all levels of our organisation. 
4.    Setting and including within the inclusion and equality action plan targets for diversity in senior roles, recruitment, progression and/or remuneration.
5.    Reviewing our performance against the action plan and any targets, producing a report on our progress and revising the action plan in light of any progress or lack of progress annually.
6.    Committing at a senior level to tackling any features of our workplace culture that are or may be barriers to the fulfilment of this pledge. Recognising that, whilst we all come from different backgrounds with our own personal histories and have differing views, we commit to being respectful, considerate and compassionate at all times, open to being challenged and inviting constructive criticism particularly from those who are under-represented or disadvantaged.
7.    Committing at a senior level to address any language or conduct within the workplace which might be regarded as subjecting a person with any Characteristic to discrimination, bullying or harassment within our organisation.
8.    Asking every member of this organisation to hold themselves and each other accountable for living up to these statements and pledges.
9.    Encouraging everyone in the organisation to take time to educate themselves about the experience of and barriers faced by others so that we may be better allies to each other.
10.    Making public our pledge and publishing our targets, action plan and annual report on progress.
11.    Making training, designed to achieve and embed a comprehensive inclusive culture and practices, available to everyone in the organisation and encouraging everyone to undertake such training.