The Real Costs of Full-Time vs. Flexible Lawyers

Engaging flexible talent is the cost-efficient approach to building high-performing legal teams.

Today’s GCs struggle with increased demands and smaller budgets. Facing an avalanche of legal matters, they need an ever-increasing range of in-house expertise to meet a highly variable workload, yet budget pressure renders hiring a wide and deep bench impractical. The COVID economy has only amplified these issues, escalating enterprise risk at a time when companies have grown increasingly cost-sensitive.

Innovative GCs are responding to this new normal by transforming the way legal resources are aligned to legal matters. They are building agile legal departments with lean full-time teams to provide managerial scale and handle core competency work. This leaner team is supported, almost entirely, by a bench of trusted, on-demand lawyers for as needed expertise, workload surges, and ongoing matters.

Many other GCs are just beginning their journey to flexibility. These in-house leaders are embracing the learnings from COVID and engaging on-demand lawyers for open positions, instead of investing in full-time hires, to better support the changing demands on their teams.