Executive Assistant to the Managing Partner

Overview

Executive Assistant to the Managing Partner Jobs in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia at BlackBay Lawyers

Title: Executive Assistant to the Managing Partner

Company: BlackBay Lawyers

Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE MANAGING PARTNER

Supporting Victoria-Jane Otavski, Founder & Managing Partner BlackBay Lawyers

Welcome to BlackBay Lawyers

Welcome aboard. You have joined one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country at the most exciting point in its history. We are a firm doing groundbreaking work in the Australian legal market. This role is one of the most important in the firm, because of who you support and what your work makes possible.

Your Mandate

Your job is to make Victoria-Jane the most effective version of herself. To own everything that does not require her specific legal expertise or personal presence, so that her time and energy go only to the things that truly need her: world-class legal work, winning new business, and leading the firm.

Victoria-Jane is the firm's leading litigator, its highest biller, and its most important voice in the market. Her time is the single most valuable asset BlackBay has, and right now too much of it is lost to administration and interruption. You exist to change that. To protect, optimise, and amplify her time, energy, and output.

An assistant asks what you need. A great assistant tells you what you need. The best assistant has already done it, and you never knew there was a decision to make. That is the standard we are aiming for together.

Sophie, our Chief of Staff, owns firm-wide back-end work – leave, sick days, onboarding, and broader operational coordination. Your universe is Victoria-Jane herself. You are not responsible for running firm operations; route those matters to Sophie.

How the Best Version of This Role Operates

Over time, you will understand how Vic thinks so well, that you make dozens of small decisions a week that she never sees, and get them right, because you have become a faithful extension of her own judgement.

Become Her Operating System

Your most important early work is invisible: building an internal model of Vic so accurate you can predict what she would want in almost any situation. Spend your first weeks learning four things deeply:

• Decision patterns. How she weighs competing priorities, what she always says yes to, what she reflexively declines, and what wins when two good things collide. Learn this until you can run her decision-making engine in her absence.

• Her tells. Read her energy and bandwidth in real time. Know which days are wrong for a hard decision and which moments are right to act. This matters especially here: Vic is carrying a heavy load, and managing it is part of your job.

• Relationships. Who matters and why. Which clients and referral partners are worth interrupting her for and which can wait. Hold the commercial and personal map of her world and keep it current.

• Standards. Exactly how she likes things – how a document reads, how an email sounds, how a meeting is set up, how a room feels. Internalise the standard until your work is indistinguishable from hers.

Run on Intent, Three Steps Ahead

Do not wait for a checklist – work backward from the outcome. If Vic needs to be at a conference, you book the right flights around her preferences, arrange accommodation, build the schedule, prepare a briefing on who will be there, pre-draft the follow-ups, and present a finished plan . Live slightly in the future: the document needed Thursday is ready Monday; the diary collision three weeks out is spotted and fixed today while it is still small. Hold a complete, current map of every open loop in Vic's world: every promise made, reply owed, decision pending, follow-up due. Track them, chase them, close them.

What You Own, Day to Day

1. Diary, Time and Energy

The diary is your masterpiece, not just a calendar, and the real craft is managing her energy, not only her hours.

• Think in blocks, not appointments. Organise the week so deep billable work sits in protected blocks, BD and networking in others, and the two never collide and guard the time between.
• Protect her peak hours. An hour of her best thinking is worth many tired ones. Put the highest-value work in her best hours and the routine in the troughs.
• Protect her space. Be the wall between Vic and the hundred small interruptions – walk-ups, "quick chats," internal requests, diary invitations from people who could have emailed. Intercept them, and deliver a graceful no on her behalf.
• Protect her recovery. Her exercise time is a diary item with the same status as a court date – booked, protected, and not the first thing sacrificed when the day gets busy. Build in breathing room before she has to ask for it.
• Run the day in real time. Be half a step ahead all day – papers ready, dial-ins tested, the matter summarised in three lines, the car booked, lunch arrived. She should never have to ask what is next.

2. Billing and Time Recording

• This goes directly to firm revenue, so it matters enormously.
• Capture her billable activity contemporaneously – from her calendar, calls, and emails, or a short end-of-day sit-down.
• Draft the narratives. For invoices that carry a narrative, draft it so she only reviews and approves.
• Watch the Smokeball alerts. Flag matters nearing their budget ceiling to Vic or the responsible lawyer so funds are topped up before work stops – protecting cash flow and the client.
• Hold the monthly rhythm. Make sure her invoices go out at the same time every month, chasing the one sign-off that holds up a bill.

3. Communications, in Her Voice

• Own the inbox triage. Urgent-and-for-Vic, can-wait, can-be-handled-by-someone-else, and noise. Surface only what needs her, and ensure nothing important is buried.
• Write as her. Absorb her cadence, warmth, and formality until an email from you is an email from her. This is what keeps her office responsive and personal even when she is in court for three days.
• Be the human filter. Every request for time with Vic runs through you. Know the difference between a referral partner worth interrupting her for and an internal query for Sophie or a Partner.

4. Business Development and Profile

Vic is fully committed to speaking, podcasts, media, and high-value networking. You are the engine room behind it.

• Manage the BD calendar end to end. Book and coordinate engagements and handle logistics – travel, briefing notes, what she is speaking on, who she is meeting and why.
• Prepare her for every room. Work with our BD team to write a short brief before each engagement: who is there, who to meet, what the firm wants from it, and any follow-ups owed from last time. Make her look effortlessly prepared.
• Chase the follow-through. Afterwards, action the follow-ups – the introduction promised, the proposal owed, the coffee to book, so BD relationships convert rather than evaporate.
• Support profile and awards. Help coordinate submission deadlines and gather material, so her profile-building runs on rails.



5. The Personal Layer

The personal and professional are one system.

• Absorb the friction. Lunch on her desk before she has to think about it; travel and accommodation booked; expenses reconciled; the reservation, the gift, the dry cleaning quietly handled.
• Anticipate, do not wait to be asked. Notice the back-to-back day and solve lunch before it is a problem. The best version of this role is always slightly ahead.
• Know her preferences cold. How she travels, where she sits, what she eats, how she likes documents presented, when she does her best thinking, and when to leave her alone.

Who You Will Need to Be

The temperament is what truly makes this role. At your best, you are:

• Anticipatory by nature. Where others see a request, you see the three things that will follow it.
• Calm. The point of composure in a fast-moving firm. The more chaotic things get, the clearer you become and your composure steadies everyone around you.
• Discreet. You will hold Vic's confidences, financials, and pressures every day. Trust is the currency of the role.
• Sound in judgement. You know what Vic would want without being told, and exactly where the line sits between deciding and asking.
• Egoless. Your satisfaction comes from the machine running beautifully, not from being seen to run it.
• Reliable. Whatever you say you will handle is handled, every time, without a reminder.

How We Will Work Together

• A daily touchpoint. A short start-of-day alignment and an end-of-day wrap – brief, consistent, protected. The backbone of the role.
• A weekly look-ahead. Once a week, step back with Vic across the week and fortnight ahead: BD, travel, deadlines, anything to protect.
• Ask early, anticipate later. In the first month ask freely – it is how you build the model. Over time, the aim is to ask less and anticipate more.
• Feedback both ways. If something is not working, say so. This works best as a genuine partnership.

The Ultimate Test

You will know you have mastered the role when Vic becomes capable of things she could not do alone: taking on more, reaching higher, resting better, and carrying less – not because she is working harder, but because an entire layer of her life has been lifted off her and handled, flawlessly, by you.

Who is Victoria-Jane?

Vic is one of Australia's finest lawyers – whip-smart and highly respected in the legal profession. She founded BlackBay four years ago and has rapidly scaled it into what the industry has recognised as Australia's best Boutique Law Firm. Vic holds the highest ethical and professional standards.

What sets Vic apart is her warmth, generosity, and genuine care for her team and her clients. She has no ego, is fun, friendly, and has a laugh that lights up every room.

Welcome to the team. We're glad you're here.