As corporate legal departments face the challenge of meeting fluctuating demands without overextending resources, there’s never been a greater need for flexible legal talent. Legal departments manage gaps caused by attrition, parental leave, or hiring freezes. They need to deliver specialized expertise for critical projects and be able to increase team capacity temporarily without adding permanent headcount. 

As the scope of legal work continues to evolve, employers must adopt a thoughtful, strategic approach to finding and integrating flexible legal talent — one that prioritizes human connection and collaboration.

Rather than relying on an email with a basic job requisition, dedicating time to meaningful communication at the start of the hiring process is imperative. A 30-minute intake conversation is instrumental in aligning expectations, assessing needs, and laying the groundwork for a successful hire.

This investment of time delivers several key benefits:

• A tailored understanding of role requirements: Effective intake conversations go beyond generic role descriptions. They help hiring managers articulate the skills, experience, and personal attributes needed for the position. More often than not, the intake conversation helps the hiring manager further hone the hard and soft skills required, and this additional clarity ensures that candidates are better matched to the role.

• Enhanced client service: By engaging in these conversations, organizations and service providers develop true partnerships. Service providers develop a keen understanding of each client and hiring manager and can better find the best candidates for them. In instances where a flexible talent hiring manager must respond to a time sensitive business need, being able to call a trusted advisor who understands their business and knows their culture increases the likelihood of finding the best talent as quickly as possible. In other instances, when the hiring manager’s need is not as clear, intake calls can serve as an opportunity to brainstorm, get market feedback, and ultimately develop clarity regarding the candidate profile they are looking for. 

• Clearly aligned candidate expectations: Flexible legal talent is required to hit the ground running and make an impact with minimal onboarding. The more accurately service providers can describe the hard and soft skills required for a role and the overall client culture, the more likely it is that the candidate will have clear expectations for the role and be successful in it. 

Skipping this interaction — or relying too heavily on automated systems — can lead to misaligned hires, which can have larger implications, such as business delays (when interim hires fail to deliver as expected), wasted resources (considering onboarding investments), and overall disruption to the team. While technology can assist in screening candidates and managing logistics, it cannot replace the nuanced understanding that comes from human interaction.

Successful Engagement in an Increasingly Virtual World

While the need for flexible legal talent is clear, identifying, assessing, and onboarding these professionals has evolved with the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work environments. As with the intake process, it again becomes critical to invest time in human connection and collaboration. Service providers and hiring managers must be aware of, and compensate for the following realities: 

• Assessing cultural fit in a virtual-first world: Many interactions today happen over email or video calls, requiring a different approach to evaluate a candidate’s intangible qualities. Cultural fit plays a pivotal role in flexible legal talent success and can be difficult to assess in an entirely virtual environment. Both service providers and hiring managers must take the time to compensate for the lack of in-person interactions. At a minimum, service providers should conduct two rounds of interviews with cameras on, and they should strongly recommend that hiring managers do the same for any candidate they select to interview. 

• Onboarding in remote settings: When onboarding flexible talent remotely, it can be challenging to integrate these individuals quickly and effectively. Consistent communication between service providers and hiring managers around onboarding processes, training expectations, and timelines is essential. Frequent and proactive communication at the outset will help avoid delays in productivity and keep the engagement on track. 

• Managing integration with a geographically dispersed team: Once flexible legal talent is selected and onboarded, there is a critical 4-6 week window in which the hiring manager and service provider must continue to communicate regularly with that talent and each other. Weekly check-ins are used to get feedback on work product, turnaround time, and integration with the legal team and any internal clients to set the engagement up for longterm success. Serviceproviders must make an effort to help facilitate communication that previously would have been natural in an in-person office setting between hiring managers and flexible legal talent. Hiring managers open to this are far more likely to have a successful engagement.

Getting the Return on Effort

Organizations that successfully secure and integrate flexible legal talent recognize the value of investing time and effort. This includes: 

• Taking stock of needs: Hiring managers can identify gaps, define priorities, and ensure alignment across the team by engaging in strategic conversations upfront. Working with service providers who are experienced advisors can bring additional value to these conversations as they can bring a wider perspective and insight to the hiring manager’s objectives. 

• Focusing on human interaction: From intake conversations to onboarding, meaningful human connections lead to deeper understanding of what’s required, stronger hires, and better long-term outcomes. 

• Leveraging technology strategically: Technology can enhance efficiency but must be applied to the right parts of the process and be balanced with human judgment to drive success. 

Whether it’s technological advances, regulatory changes, or the ongoing shifts of business priorities, flexible legal talent solutions can help corporate legal teams keep pace with the needs of the business. However, they will effectively address these challenges when they are approached thoughtfully and strategically. In the evolving world of legal talent acquisition, there’s no substitute for the value of combining technology with human expertise.

 
Rebekah Stafford oversees the Epiq Counsel service line. She brings more than 15 years of industry experience to the role, including co-founding Axiom’s Chicago office, launching Axiom’s Houston office and managing Axiom’s Boston office. Rebekah’s experience also includes launching several offices and serving as the VP of Strategy for a technology-based recruiting platform as well as being a litigation associate at an AmLaw 100 firm. Rebekah is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.