MS Legal Search Senior Director, Judy Hudson, discusses hiring trends for in-house counsel in the current job market.
Temporary Attorneys in Greater Demand at Law Firms, Legal Departments
By Erin Coe
Law360, San Diego (August 19, 2013, 9:15 PM ET) — Still reeling from the effects of the 2008 recession, many law firms and in-house counsel are using more temporary attorneys, and firms are increasingly relying on non-partnership-track lawyers to save on costs and work more efficiently, experts say.
Inside Edge Legal, Major Lindsey & Africa’s staffing division that provides attorneys and paralegals for long-term temporary assignments, has seen growing demand by law firms and corporate legal departments since the recruiting firm formed the division in 2009, according to Chad Marlow, managing director of the west region.
“We have seen very strong growth in this segment of our company, and we are bullish on its long-term growth potential,” Marlow said.
During the downturn, many law firms and legal departments began to consider different strategies related to staffing legal matters. Bringing someone with specific experience and expertise on staff temporarily for a particular project or utilizing a temp-to-hire model have become strategies that more law firms and in-house counsel are open to discussing, according to Marlow.
“During and shortly after the downturn, law firms and legal departments were more fiscally cautious about ramping back up after the layoffs,” he said. “Using high-caliber, interim attorneys via the contract model has allowed them to address that while not having the quality of the work product suffer.”
In addition to helping firms and in-house counsel fill skill gaps within a department and keep legal costs down, contract attorneys are being used to better respond to ebbs and flows in workload demands, according to Marlow.
“If firms or legal departments are short-staffed and need somebody in the short term but don’t have clarity on whether they need the person for the long-term, the contract model adds value,” he said. “Being able to expand or contract their workforce provides them more cost-control to increase profitability.”
Growing electronic document review and discovery needs at corporations and law firms also have opened up opportunities for temporary attorneys skilled in technology-assisted reviews, particularly those attorneys who have document review and technology software experience as well as attorneys who are fluent in multiple languages, according to Charles Volkert III, executive director of Robert Half Legal.
“Lawyers with capabilities in two or more languages are certainly in high demand, especially those who know Chinese dialects, Japanese, Spanish and German,” he said.
Although the need for temporary attorneys is increasing, Marlow said he did not see them replacing the full-time model for associates and partners any time soon.
“I don’t see the demand for contract attorneys dramatically changing how law firms and legal departments are hiring, but I do think it will continue to grow as a strategy used to complement company or firm-wide hiring and the resourcing of different projects,” he said.
Numerous law firms as well as consulting firms also are bringing in staff attorneys, who are not on the partnership track, for document review, project management and e-discovery related work, according to Volkert.
“We’re seeing opportunities for staff attorneys that weren’t there a few years ago,” he said.
The staff attorney role may be attractive to some attorneys who are not interested in working the long hours required to get on the partnership track and are seeking more of a work-life balance, according to Marlow. It also helps law firms staff projects more inexpensively and improve the retention of their workforce.
“It’s being employed by firms to complement their hiring because it is addressing how to align what certain segments of the workforce are looking for while still addressing what the firm needs,” he said.
The collapse of major law firms like Howrey LLP and Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP reinforces that firms remain in an increasingly competitive environment. Firms that are able to make themselves more flexible, from accomodating clients with alternative free arrangements to using nontraditional attorney roles, are going to run more efficiently and be in a better position to compete in teh legal market, according to Jack Zaremski, founder of Hanover Legal Personnel Services Inc.
“The more ways firms find to make use of attorneys in an optimal way and find different paths for attorneys to follow, which might be different from the structures they have fit into traditionally, the more likely they will be able to continue to thrive,” he said.
However, although staff attorneys have gained traction at law firms, in-house counsel are still reluctant to hire lawyers who are on a non-partnership track, according to experts. Legal departments view staff attorneys as being on a lower tier compared to lawyers on the partnership track because they tend to lack the experience of negotiating transactions and managing litigation that in-house attorneys are looking for, according to Judy Hudson, a senior director of MS Legal Search LLC, who works closely with in-house counsel.
“In-house counsel needs someone to manage a case from start to finish and someone to put in front of the board,” she said. “Staff attorneys typically have not had this experience because they’ve done task-based work all along.”
Companies also haven’t had to think about hiring staff attorneys because the legal industry remains a buyer’s market, with plenty of attorneys on the partnership track as well as laterals and attorneys from other companies competing for in-house jobs, according to Hudson.
But attorneys who don’t want to climb the partnership ladder have many more options available to them than in the past thanks, in part, to the growth in e-discovery, legal technology, and lawyer recruiting and staffing companies, according to Volkert.
“The number of opportunities outside the general counsel or partner role that lawyers can consider within the larger legal services industry is more than ever before,” he said.
–Editing by Elizabeth Bowen and Melissa Tinklepaugh.
© Copyright 2013, Portfolio Media, Inc.