Finding the right freelancers
Earlier this year, The Lawyer published an article by LexisNexis, looking at the competitive advantage which can be leveraged utilising freelance professionals within the legal industry. Specifically, it looked at how law firms can strategically use this kind of flexible resource, and amongst listing many of the benefits, the piece highlighted a concern around quality control. How can a law firm ensure that legal consultants will uphold the same high standards as their employed lawyers do?
Well, the answer is relatively straightforward – adopt a robust vetting procedure and empower the team engaging with freelancers to use their professional judgement.
Finding the right freelancers
Whether it’s to fix a leaky tap or something more significant, in our daily lives engaging a contractor can often create uncertainty – will they have the right skills and expertise to do the job required, will they be straightforward to deal with, will there be hidden costs? Word of mouth often only takes you so far; you need to do more research and find a trusted source of support.
Vario has been placing freelance lawyers (Vario Consultants) with clients for over 10 years and key to this has been our ability to bring the right people on board. As a law firm provider, we do thorough background checks and investigate professional credentials. Factors such as PQE (post qualifying experience) and previous expertise can be obtained from CVs and cross-checked with referees. However, our research also investigates the behavioural approach of each Vario Consultant because this is a crucial factor in determining whether they will be a good fit for freelancing, and the types of roles and organisations they will excel in.
By ensuring that we have a robust selection process in place, we minimise risk and ensure that the freelancer joining your team is of the right quality and for our clients.
Freelance resource for in-house teams
Although, the article by LexisNexis focused on law firms utilising freelancers, flexible legal resource is increasingly used by in-house legal teams, as a way to get the support they need without recruitment and employment costs or balance sheet commitment. The advantages outlined by the article were that freelancers provide scalable expertise, on demand, in a cost-effective manner - this equally applies to busy in-house teams, and we increasingly see businesses across all sectors seeking to access to our hub of interim legal professionals, whilst only paying for the support they need.
A survey by Legatics and YouGov found that 92% of lawyers have experienced stress or burnout due to their job, with 25% experiencing it daily. Often this is the result of simply not having enough (or the right) expertise within teams to be able to deal with the volume and complexity of work required. Improving your working culture will go some way towards fixing this, but if there is too much work for the team in place (whether seasonal or due to sudden spikes) then this will only go away by increasing the team’s capacity. In-house teams, like law firms, increasingly utilise freelancers to do this on an interim basis without the need for permanent expansion of their headcount.
What makes a good flexible legal resource?
There’s a long and a short way of answering this question. On the one hand you could say “how long’s a piece of string” and start listing all the factors – cost effective, scalable, impressive level of expertise. However, it’s far more appropriate to say that it should be tailored to your needs.
Every solution should start with the individual client and their business in mind. We try to develop a deep understanding of the challenges and resources in play as well as any strategic aims that the business may have. Only from this position can you begin to determine what (and who) will be the best fit in terms of placing freelancers within legal teams.
In doing this, it is beneficial to have access to a diverse talent pool – there’s little point in identifying a problem if you are unable to solve it. Within our Vario Hub, we have built a diverse community of highly skilled legal professionals across a range of sectors and levels of experience. When placing a consultant with a client, you can’t force a square peg in a round hole and expect to have a successful assignment. Liaising with consultants on an ongoing basis allows us to help them determine which projects will be a good fit for them to work on. By doing this, you’re far more likely to see successful assignments.
Finally, it’s important for your flexible resource to be accessible across a range of jurisdictions. Multi-national businesses frequently need support across their markets, so being able to provide a trusted service in different jurisdictions is an attractive prospect for many clients. Our Account Management team have a permanent presence in 8 jurisdictions with partner arrangements in 3 others to help widen our geographical reach even further.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our freelance offering, reach out to our Flexible Services team to see how we can help your business.