The Definitive Playbook for Building Legal Departments at Growth Companies

Addressing Pain Points, Minimizing Costs, Empowering GCs

"With flexible legal talent, you get access to a new type of support - advice from specialists who are embedded with your colleagues."

GCs at growth companies can pursue a flexible, creative model for legal resourcing that enables them to be budget-conscious while also matching the right lawyer to their current legal need. Simply said, they must realize they have options now: They can look beyond the dichotomy of sending work to a law firm, or making a permanent headcount hire.

Agile legal departments, with a lean full-time team supplemented with flexible talent, is the higher standard model. It can:

Address the Ebbs and Flows:

Flexible teams can provide the support of highly qualified, commercial-ready experts for areas of greatest current need, without the expense and risk of a full-time hire. GCs can strategically spread resources across multiple practice areas, and match their deployment to the initiatives that need the most attention or the risks that need the most mitigation.

Resolve the Compromises:

By employing a lean legal team of trusted lieutenants, growth companies can leverage the benefits of both the needed full-time generalists and the expertise of flexible on-demand lawyers for ongoing or discrete legal matters and projects. This approach also provides the team with a layer of core employees who can provide managerial scale and handle core competency work, while being effectively supported by a bench of trusted on-demand lawyers who work more efficiently than outside counsel because they operate as an extension of the in-house team.

Disentangle Leadership:

The combination of a core team who can manage external counsel, and the flexible layer of lawyers who can provide specialist and ongoing support, equips GCs with the foundation to elevate their roles. GCs who employ this approach are empowered to serve as strategic counselors to their C-suite peers, and to focus on the legal strategy that will accelerate growth and help achieve corporate objectives.