How You Can Maintain a Flexible, In-House Career After Changes to IR35

While important changes to the UK’s IR35 law don’t go live until 6 April 2021, they're already impacting how businesses hire and work with legal contractors. “Companies have already begun to move contractors from annual to quarterly contracts,” noted Milan Patel, an Axiom Lawyer who previously worked as a freelance legal contractor. “With more businesses making their contract roles shorter, the pressure of the administration is only going to increase as the process will become much more frequent, reducing the flexibility and ease of consulting.”

As a legal freelancer or contractor, if you have similar working conditions, control, and responsibilities as an employee, you’re more likely to fall under IR35. If you are looking to maintain a flexible career after changes to IR35 go into effect, Axiom is set up to enable lawyers to access quality work outside of the traditional private practice or in-house career paths, but within the boundaries of IR35. Below are five reasons to consider continuing your career at Axiom.

1. Experience managing flexible legal employees

Axiom’s model has been finessed over the 20 years of our existence. We’re built to support lawyers who wish to work in line with their experiences and interests. Unlike many of the existing flexible resourcing models that only work with contractors, we’ve always hired the vast majority of Axiom lawyers within an employment framework – without requiring them to sacrifice their flexibility.

“I was drawn to Axiom as a legal contractor by the attractive client base,” states Milan. “I had a very positive experience on my first engagement, with a large technology company; the support from the Talent Partnership team and the very positive relationship with everyone I worked with in Axiom’s business team were factors in making me join as an employee.”

2. Proactivity – leading to more opportunities

“Now that I'm an employee of Axiom, I don’t need to worry about my pipeline of work drying up, or focussing effort on finding my own engagements,” says Milan.

We proactively work with our lawyers to help find engagements that fit their needs and preferences and our clients recognise Axiom as the go-to for high-quality, flexible legal talent. This provides you with a greater range of companies to work within – from lean startups to top investment banks.

3. Combining talent with technology

We’re continually investing in technology to support and guide your Axiom experience. Axiom for Talent is our bespoke, online platform that helps you efficiently manage your Axiom career and facilitate communication around your skills, your experience, and how you want to work.

4. A strong legal community

We host regular events for our robust community of lawyers. These include breakfasts with Axiom’s senior leadership, happy hours, mentorship programs, and team-building activities.

“Axiom finds a great balance of being part of a community and feeling like part of a unified team, whilst evolving past the traditional law firm model and offering great flexibility. I feel more engaged with the wider Axiom legal community that I expected,” says Milan Patel.

5. We’re built for this

Our dedicated business teams partner with you, to ensure you have everything you need to get started at a client engagement, and to support you throughout your time at Axiom. At Axiom, 75% of our lawyers receive as much work as they are looking for, and our model helps remove the uncertainty that comes with freelance legal work, allowing you to focus on legal work most interesting to you.

IR35 poses significant challenges for lawyers seeking self-determination over their careers. For more information about how to navigate the upcoming changes, download “Navigating Flexible Legal Talent After IR35,” our free guide for legal freelancers and contractors. If you want to learn more about our flexible employment model, get in touch with us at Axiom.