Senior Information Officer (4 days per week)

Purpose of job

To provide a comprehensive, high-quality, responsive and innovative information and research service to partners and staff across the firm, working as a senior member of the RIKS team. The Senior Information Officer is a senior technical specialist who provides expert research and information support, coordinates the day-to-day operation of the research service, and develops the research capabilities of the team through coaching, mentoring and promotion of effective research methodologies, including AI-assisted research techniques.

Specific duties:

Research & Enquiries Leadership

• To undertake the most complex, sensitive, high-value and partner-led research enquiries, presenting the results in a clear, succinct format, as required and to deadline.
• Acts as a senior subject matter expert for legal, business and competitive intelligence research.
• To provide quality assurance and guidance on research outputs, both for self and junior team members.
• To maintain expertise in research tools, platforms and methodologies.
• To maintain awareness of the firm's practice areas and sector focus to provide contextually relevant research support.
• Acts as a champion for emerging research technologies and AI-enabled research tools, while exercising sound judgement about the reliability and accuracy of outputs.
• Identifies opportunities to improve research workflows through technology and process enhancements.

Service Coordination

• To coordinate day-to-day workflow across the team, triage, allocate and delegate research enquiries.
• Monitors workloads and service capacity.
• Supports rota planning and service coverage arrangements.
• Acts as the first point of escalation for operational issues.
• Supports collection and reporting of service statistics and management information.

Current Awareness services

• Lead development and reporting of current awareness products and services. To evaluate the relevance and quality of content and ensure updates are appropriately targeted to recipient needs.

Training

• To create training materials and deliver advanced training sessions on RIKS resources, legal research skills and effective and responsible use of AI-assisted research tools for fee-earners, trainees and other business services staff. Create guidance materials, best practice notes and supporting resources.

Promoting the Service

• To act as an advocate for the RIKS function, attending departmental and practice group meetings as required to raise awareness of the team's services, build relationships with fee-earners and business services colleagues, and identify unmet needs.

Process Improvement

• To contribute to the continuous improvement of RIKS processes and workflows, identifying inefficiencies and working with the Head of RIKS to implement changes and develop team procedures and best practice guidance.

Team Supervision & Support

• To allocate work to, supervise and coach Information Officers and other junior team members, contributing to their development and supporting the Head of RIKS with performance management as required. This includes:
• Coaching in effective legal, business and sector research techniques.
• Mentor junior team members and support professional development.
• Support onboarding and induction of new team members.
• Encouraging adoption of appropriate AI-enabled research tools and practices across the team.
• Providing guidance on prompt development, validation of AI-generated outputs and good practice in AI-assisted research.
• Supporting colleagues in combining traditional research methods with AI-enabled tools to improve efficiency and quality.

Deputising for the Head of RIKS

• To deputise for the Head of RIKS in their absence, providing continuity of leadership and oversight across the team's operations and escalating matters as appropriate.

Information Officer support

To support the Information Officer with the following tasks and to ensure continuity of cover:

General administrative tasks and library housekeeping

• Starters, movers and leavers admin.
• Filing, book processing, archiving and document delivery.
• Keeping the main library and department libraries in good order. Other general administrative duties as required.

Collection management

• Management of the hard copy and digital collections, purchasing, assisting with finance management and budget control, and maintaining accurate records of subscriptions and resources.

Current Awareness services

• Provision of tailored updates and alerts.

Knowledge Management

• To provide support to the firm, working with the Head of Knowledge, knowledge lawyers and others in the knowledge team. To collate and manage knowhow and curate grounding documents for AI systems, and to work on firm wide knowledge projects.

Training & Inductions

• To support the RIKS team in providing legal research training to fee-earners; delivering inductions and specialised trainee training and ad hoc sessions as required. To assist in developing training materials and guidance on the use of research and knowledge tools.

Additional duties

Assisting team members, supporting RIKS projects and business plan objectives, and covering for other duties as necessary.