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Join Us

Legal Admin Volunteer

Hours
1-2 days per week
Responsible to
Legal Administrator
Ideal time commitment
6 months minimum
Location
Helen Bamber Foundation Group office (near Old Street)
Benefits
travel and lunch expenses covered
Closing date

This role is an opportunity to get experience of working in a busy office environment supporting a legal advice service. Through providing vital administrative support, responding to enquiries, arranging client meetings and coordinating interpreters, you will help our expert legal advisers to deliver specialist legal advice and representation to refugees and survivors in complex cases. Through this role, you will get experience of working in a legal advice organisation and an understanding of its administrative and support needs. As the role develops, there may also be the opportunity to gain basic knowledge of Legal Aid procedures and client care.

Main tasks and activities

  • Providing general administrative support such as copying, scanning, filing documents, data entry and generating reports from client databases;
  • Basic reception duties including answering the phone, taking messages, opening and distributing post, and monitoring our email inboxes;
  • Maintaining signposting list and providing information about alternative services where we cannot assist;
  • Booking client appointments and interpreters, and maintaining interpreter register;
  • Assisting the Legal Administrator and/or Billing Coordinator with preparing files for billing or transfer to another provider.

Skills and experience needed

  • Understanding of, and commitment to, the objectives of Asylum Aid;
  • A demonstrable empathy for our vulnerable clients, including asylum seekers, refugees and survivors of torture and trafficking;
  • Punctual, reliable and self-motivated with a positive, ’can-do’ attitude;
  • Basic understanding of the challenges facing our clients and of the UK asylum system
  • High degree of accuracy and attention to detail
  • Experience of working with spreadsheet computer programs (e.g. Excel) and databases
  • Confidence with IT skills
  • Excellent organisational skills
  • Strong communication skills – written, verbally on the phone and face-to-face
  • Ability to work well as part of a team and form effective working relationships
  • Understanding of the importance of confidentiality and respect for client confidentiality
  • Ability to complete tasks independently once given a clear brief

What you will get out of the role:

  • Greater understanding of the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees;
  • Knowledge of the UK asylum process and associated legal systems;
  • Experience of working in a busy legal advice service;
  • Basic awareness of Legal Aid eligibility and procedures;
  • Experience of taking calls and responding to enquiries from vulnerable and often distressed clients;
  • Stronger administrative skills;
  • Ability to process large amounts of data and prioritise or categorise it;
  • An ability to multi-task between competing priorities.

Equal Opportunities

The Helen Bamber Foundation and Asylum Aid are an equal opportunities and Living Wage employer. We are committed to attracting and recruiting diverse candidates as we are keen to make sure that our staff, trustees, volunteers and ambassadors reflect the communities we serve and the wider community we work in at every level within the organisation.  We particularly welcome applications from those with Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.

Please attach a cover letter under 'Supporting Documents' along with your CV. Unfortunately, applications which do not include a cover letter cannot be taken forward to interview.

Due to capacity constraints, we will only respond to applicants who are being invited to interview. 

Please note, a three-month probation period is in place across all HBF voluntary roles.

Successful candidates will be offered the volunteer position subject to an Enhanced DBS certificate.

Equal Opportunities

Our commitment to principles of equity, diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our approach to our clients, our volunteers and our staff, and we are an equal opportunities and Living Wage employer. We are committed to attracting and recruiting diverse candidates because we are keen to make sure that all our staff, trustees, volunteers and ambassadors reflect the communities we serve and the wider community we work in.

We genuinely welcome and encourage applications from a range of backgrounds, especially people of colour, people with disabilities, people from low socio-economic backgrounds, refugees, stateless people and others with lived experience of forced migration or trauma.

Download full job description here.

Application form

To apply, please add your details and upload your CV and cover letter and CV, and press submit to answer some short questions.


The personal information that you provide to us this application will be stored on our database. We will process the personal information that we collect (apart from equal opportunities data) for the purposes of the charity’s legitimate interests, as follows: (1) to assess your application to work for the charity; (2) to organise interviews, or other recruitment activities; (3) for the purpose of communicating with you about your application; (4) to provide a record of our recruitment process for audit purposes and to respond to queries. We will only retain your personal information in our own database for as long as necessary in order to fulfil the purposes for which we need it, as described above. You have the right to access, correct or delete a copy of the data we hold about you at any time. If you would like to do any of these things, or if you have any concerns, please contact jobs@helenbamber.org.

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