Virtual Bench: The Bench's Virtual Legal Secretarial Services

Following on from our last blog on The Rise of Virtual Secondments, we thought it was time to shout about another Virtual Bench offering - our Virtual Legal Secretarial Services. This includes a range of services such as:

• Preparing documents (such as Word, Powerpoint, Exel etc.);

• Typing and fixing the format of documents (that annoying automatic numbering etc);

• Dictation typing (hopefully not from the old school tapes above that some of us oldies remember well);

• Running comparisons of documents;

• Proof reading;

• Preparing minutes of meetings;

• Document, database and diary management; and

• Generally everything your normal legal secretary / personal assistant handles.

Although some artificial intelligence (AI) personal assistant solutions are useful, call us old fashioned but we still believe that a human legal secretary is a vital part of any law firm or in-house legal team. That said, our view is that these services can be provided just as well (or even better) remotely via the internet rather than needing to be based onsite in the office.

Benefits of our Virtual Legal Secretarial Services are similar to those mentioned in our last blog for virtual lawyers but also include:

• flexibility (e.g. in terms of duration and the ability to terminate the arrangement/service compared to performance managing an employee);

• the ability to obtain specialist legal secretaries for specific matters (e.g. a specialist in presentations or an Arabic speaker);

• no hiring / recruitment costs or HR admin;

• no headcount issues - just a service fee payable;

• more cost-effective (e.g. to utilise and pay for the support as and when needed); and

• the ability to provide overflow and overnight support (e.g. using our legal secretaries located around the globe).

Our legal secretaries have extensive (all 10+ years) experience gained in international law firms and/or in-house legal departments in the United Arab Emirates and speak numerous languages. For more information about our Virtual Bench please contact info@thebenchlaw.com or your normal contact at The Bench. If you are looking for more permanent support, rebecca@thebenchlaw.com can also assist with the recruitment of permanent full time legal secretaries (either onsite or remote).