The push for efficiency and cost pressures continues to require legal departments to look at hiring more strategically.  With legal departments already stretched far beyond their capacity, General Counsel are staring at two potential outcomes—burning out their teams and struggling to keep up with the needs of the business.  Fortunately, there is an affordable alternative that solves this challenge—flexible legal talent. In this blog post, we'll explore the benefits of engaging flexible legal talent to support your team.

• Support the business:  Because legal departments are understaffed by design, they are struggling to keep up with the pace of business.  Engaging flexible legal talent helps bridge the gap between the workload and the capacity of the department.  
• Scalability: Engaging flexible legal talent allows you to scale your team up and down in response to varying workloads and project demands without making a permanent hire.  
• Expertise on-demand:  Is legal support needed for a new product launch or geographic expansion or to respond to a regulatory change?  Engage a flexible talent lawyer with the specialized expertise when you need it, ensuring that you have access to the right skills, precisely when required.
• In-house orientation.  At Epiq Counsel, our lawyers were in-house prior to joining the firm, so they bring a practical, in-house orientation to their work. 
• Cost-Efficiency: The structure of the flexible legal talent models enables you to engage experienced, credentialed lawyers at rates that will fit within your budget. 
• Geographic diversity: Legal departments can tap into legal talent across the country, allowing for broader coverage and localized experience. 
• Burn-out: Legal departments are stretched far beyond their capacity.  Even if there is an economic slowdown in 2024, the volume of legal work will stay the same since most in-house work is not directly correlated with economic activity.  Engaging flexible legal talent will take some of the pressure off your team, reducing burnout and attrition. Leaders need to consciously and mindfully design their legal departments so that their teams have the opportunity to stretch their intellect, gain experience, and maintain balance.

Incorporating flexible legal talent into your legal department's strategy is a proactive response to managing budget constraints, and retaining your talent, while ensuring that your legal department enables the business to move fast, which is even more important during difficult economic times. 

Let us help you – to learn more about how Epiq Counsel can support your legal department in 2024, please contact us.