Legal Executive Assistant/Paralegal

Prudential Financial, Inc. is a multinational financial services leader with operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Leveraging its heritage of life insurance and asset management expertise, Prudential is focused on helping individual and institutional customers grow and protect their wealth. The company's well-known Rock symbol is an icon of strength, stability, expertise and innovation that has stood the test of time. Prudential's businesses offer a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds, asset management, and real estate services. For more information, please visit www.prudential.com The Prudential Law Department has an opening for a Paralegal to provide support to the attorney(s) in the Prudential Mortgage Capital Company ("PMCC") Section of the Law Department. PMCC originates, buys and sells, manages and services real estate related finance products on behalf of PICA, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, FHA, third party investors and its own balance sheet. In recent years PMCC's annual origination volume has exceeded $10 Billion and assets under management are approximately $ 58 Billion. The San Francisco office is one of PMCC's ten regional corporate finance offices of which three offices include on sight legal support units. Currently in San Francisco there is one Senior Corporate Counsel ("SCC") and possibly a, to be added, staff attorney. In addition to the domestic activity, San Francisco is primarily responsible for PMCC's growing international platform, which now includes Mexico and Japan and is planned to expand into a number of other international jurisdiction in the relatively near future. This position requires coordination with the attorney, paralegal and support staffs of three other regional legal offices of PMCC located in each of Atlanta, Dallas and Newark. The duties of this position will include both long-term established tasks as well as short-term projects that arise from diverse requests for legal services. Candidates must be able to learn the client's business, become familiar with numerous investment structures and their legal requirements, and otherwise become an integral part of the legal team supporting an active real estate finance investment management firm. The successful candidates will assist in drafting provisions of contracts, client communications and other documents; review relevant laws, regulations and documentation; support transactional closings and follow up on post closings items. The Paralegal will maintain corporate record books, draft meeting minutes and resolutions, coordinate state annual report filings, and conduct other corporate and partnership housekeeping. While duties of this position will vary according to need, general responsibilities may include: 1. Corporate housekeeping for domestic and international subsidiaries as well as single purpose vehicles; 2. The handling of information requests and other routine legal matters, i.e. conflict inquiries; law firm conflict waivers; confidentiality agreements; 3. Support for sales, acquisition and financing transactions; 4. Outside counsel support; 5. Data entry and maintenance of various databases; 6. Some legal research and writing; 7. Compose notes, letters and miscellaneous correspondence; 8. Manage principals' electronic mail and calendaring as directed; 9. Respond to Notes regarding availability, check with principal before accepting; 10. Draft, type and proofread letters, legal documents, charts/tables/graphs, monthly activity reports; 11. Prepare and manage expense vouchers, including travel and general expense. Maintain file copies for future reference; 12. Manage special projects, which might include: assisting the business unit, PLS time analysis, budget, etc. 13. Manage central filing system; The candidate should take ownership of and independently manage: * Legal Documents Database * Act as office point person for Legal Documents database. * Add new documents, scan documents as needed. * Assist attorneys with locating documents within the database. * Manage access list, add/delete users * Outside Counsel Costs * Track and report on outside counsel costs. * Process outside counsel invoices; maintain organized file copies for future reference. * Prepare monthly accruals of outside counsel costs. * Assist in developing and managing to office annual budget. * PLS (Prudential Legal System) Administration * Act as office point person for all PLS administrative issues. * Manage PLS matters; create new matters. * Run PLS reports on internal time, outside counsel costs, etc. Analyze information and present it in a cohesive format. * Enter PLS time. * Filing System * Review existing filing system for Principals. * If requested, develop new, more efficient filing system. * Purge old files, re-organize files, and re-label files. * Develop filing charts to track exactly what is in the files and where. * General Office Administrative Activities * Act as liaison between attorneys and business unit. Expedite urgent requests for principals' time; handle, with tact, non-urgent requests; funnel requests for document review; manage flow of all office functions. * Track due dates and ensure completion of certain administrative tasks by working with SCC, i.e. budget, objectives and individual development plans, etc. * At direction of SCC, enter information in various administrative databases, i.e. PIM Legal Objectives Database, Outside Counsel Tracking Database. * Serve as technology coordinator for group. Address any technology problems within group. Follow through to resolution. * Anticipate needs of principals. Work independently and exercise judgment and decision-making when necessary. * Handle overall office switchboard lunch break fill-in duties on rotating basis with other administrative personnel. Required Skills & ExperienceThe successful candidate will have at least four to six years' secretarial (or comparable) experience, preferably including experience as an executive secretary. The candidate should possess excellent interpersonal skills, initiative, dependability, and a high level of motivation. Excellent organizational skills, superior writing, proofreading capabilities and the ability to prioritize effectively are a must. The successful candidate should also possess excellent written and oral communication skills. Superior proficiency at word-processing skills, preferably Microsoft Word, Excel, Lotus Notes and PowerPoint or an equivalent are pre-requisites. Candidate must be willing to learn how to use all Law Department databases in Lotus Notes. Knowledge of PLS is a plus and familiarity with the Internet is desirable but not mandatory. Ability to perform basic legal research is a plus. The successful candidate should be able to work independently with minimal supervision, work under tight time constraints, and be able to prioritize his/her own work and the work of others for completion. The successful candidate will also demonstrate the ability to make precise, accurate and timely administrative judgments and demonstrate superior leadership skills. Successful candidate should be willing to develop some paralegal skills; especially in the areas of general corporate maintenance and governance and some document drafting and editing. The Prudential Insurance Company of America and its affiliates, Newark, New Jersey are Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employers and are committed to diversity in our workforce. Prudential is not seeking assistance or accepting unsolicited resumes from search firms for this employment opportunity unless contracted with Staffing. Agencies must work with Staffing as the primary point of contact and follow the Prudential application process to be considered for business. Regardless of past practice, all resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at Prudential via-email, the Internet or directly to hiring managers at Prudential in any form without a valid written search agreement in place for that position will be deemed the sole property of Prudential, and no fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Prudential as a result of the referral or through other means. Note: Any search agreement entered into with Prudential before January 2004 is null and void. Search firms are essential to the recruitment and staffing efforts at Prudential and we value the partnerships we have built with our preferred vendors. For this reason, Prudential has established and regularly maintains a preferred vendor list. Please note that even preferred vendors need to have a written search agreement signed by the Director, Recruiting Programs, Staffing at Prudential in place for the specific position in order for a fee to be paid for any candidate referrals.