March 27, 2023

 Natalie Limerick

Staffing law departments law firms flex legal resourcing Flexible lawyering

While it remains difficult to imagine the legal field without law departments and law firms, these institutions no longer define the career possibilities for legal professions. A third paradigm – the flex career – has emerged that provides unique and significant advantages for not only practitioners but also law organisations.

Until recently, junior lawyers faced a clearly defined fork in the road at the outset of their careers. One path was joining a law firm and pursuing partnership. The other was entering a law department and trying to work their way up the corporate law ladder to the role of general counsel. While there were exceptions, few lawyers switched paths; it remains uncommon for a firm lawyer to return to private practice after working within a law department.

Lawyering at a Law Firm

The two paths – being a firm lawyer or working in-house – remain distinct. The law firm model has long involved two components: leverage and training. The firm’s junior lawyers generate revenue for the partnership, while the partners and other experienced lawyers help associates develop expertise in a specific area of the law.

For law firms, the model required employing lawyers full-time on the expectation that each year, the revenue of an associate would eventually cover the overhead incurred by employing them. With the recent explosion in associate salaries, more than a few firms are finding this a riskier and more expensive proposition.

For lawyers, success in the law firm career track requires enduring the grueling marathon of billing thousands of hours and achieving sufficient specialisation to add unique value and command higher rates (and thereby earn the partnership more money). There are no guarantees, and many firms still adhere to the “up or out” approach that sheds associates who fall short of expectations for either revenue generation or subject matter expertise.

The Law Department Track

On the law department side, the critical objective for in-house lawyers is advancing the business their law department serves. An in-house lawyer’s value is not a function of hours worked (their schedule typically matches those of non-lawyer employees) or specialised knowledge. Rather, it comes from being adept at supporting their client (the company) in any area of law relevant to the project, challenge, or business goal at hand. The role calls for familiarity with a wide range of practice areas and types of matters but usually does not require deep expertise in any particular subject – that is what outside counsel is for. Skill at managing projects and optimising operations also boost an in-house practitioner’s standing, whereas such skill is typically largely irrelevant to a firm attorney’s value.

The Emergence of the Flexible Lawyering Career Path

Many – indeed, most – lawyers continue to choose one of these two dominant career paths. However, over the last decade or so, another path has emerged that combines aspects of law department and law firm practice: the flexible lawyering career. With the flexible paradigm, a lawyer’s value springs from their ability to move between the law department and law firm environments. They understand the needs of law departments and know how to view legal matters from a business perspective. They also possess specialisation that enables them to fill gaps in a firm’s range of subject-matter expertise.

The Benefits for Practitioners and Law Organisations

Both practitioners and law organisations benefit from the flex paradigm. For practitioners, the flex career provides opportunities beyond what a law department or law firm can offer alone, particularly exposure to a broader range of practice areas or industries than otherwise available. By selecting assignments that match their interests and professional goals, flex lawyers enjoy greater control over their careers than with the single-track models of in-house or firm practice. Also, because a flex attorney can service multiple clients, the flex paradigm eliminates the risk of under-utilisation that can cut short a law firm career.

For law organisations, the advantages of flex lawyers are multi-fold. First, they provide a way to quickly obtain expertise critical in a particular matter without the delay, difficulty, and risks inherent in recruiting and developing a lawyer as a full-time employee. Second, the flex approach is more cost-effective than using lawyers who are full-time employees. By utilising superior talent on an as-needed basis, a law organisation eliminates the start-up costs and ongoing overhead of a lawyer employed by the organisation. Additionally, flex lawyers know how to quickly come up to speed and add value at the outset of a project. They enable a ‘just-in-time inventory’ approach to talent: the lawyer you need, when you need them, for only as long as you need them. They also bring a broader perspective and an ability to see the big picture that lawyers with only in-house or law firm experience may not see.

Neither law departments nor law firms are in any danger of becoming extinct. However, now that flexible lawyering has matured and is an established alternative, lawyers can enjoy career paths of their own design while law departments and law firms can optimise their staffing to maximum benefit – fiscally, operationally, competitively, and otherwise.