With a volatile economy and uncertain budgets and headcounts, in-house teams are under enormous pressure. They must tackle new legal work streams, mitigate risk, and adjust to changing priorities while ensuring they are spending effectively and delivering results.
In addition, the world of work has rapidly evolved. Consumers expect more choices, no longer wanting to choose from the same old monolithic brands, while employees expect and demand greater flexibility in terms of working location and hours.
To meet their goals in this new reality, legal teams need to rethink how legal work gets done, and to find the right partner for the right work. They need a partner who understands their business and can accommodate their needs as they change — whether it’s a shift in corporate priorities or a directive to reduce outside counsel spend in a volatile economy.
Traditionally, in-house teams had two options when it came to legal talent: hiring additional, permanent in-house lawyers, or sending work to a law firm. These two options don’t fully encompass the range of flexibility that many modern legal departments require. Fortunately, companies like Axiom enable legal teams to access flexible legal talent and forge a “third path” between law firms and hiring in-house.
As you work to accomplish your business goals amongst unpredictable market conditions, and rethink how your legal department can help you do so, consider these three major factors: Access to the right talent, ability to build a dynamic team, and opportunity to work with a partner that understands your business.
Access world-class talent
Often, in-house teams require lawyers with both specialized legal expertise and business acumen to accomplish their goals. They have traditionally relied exclusively on law firms to access outside talent or expertise. However, world-class legal talent no longer work exclusively for law firms. In addition, in-house teams may not need the apparatus of a law firm to tackle a specific business need or challenge.
At Axiom, talented lawyers come to work for us to work on a variety of engagements with leading companies that also suit their experience and preferences. Our lawyers bring this deep commercial experience and subject matter expertise directly to our clients.
In addition, Axiom lawyers are more diverse than industry standards, bringing an added perspective to in-house teams. When in-house teams partner with Axiom, they access a bench of lawyers who:
- Possess 15 years of experience on average
- Are rated the top 25% of lawyers by Axiom clients
- 52% are women
- 29% are racial/ethnic minorities
The diverse, experienced legal talent that makes up Axiom’s bench enables businesses to access the expertise they need to meet their goals.
Build a dynamic team
It’s not enough for in-house legal departments to employ flexible talent — they need to ensure they match the right lawyer with the right work. In considering how to build a dynamic, responsive team, consider adding flexible talent in the following situations:
- When you have a point-in-time talent gap, due to turnover or individuals going on parental leave
- When you allocate a high-performing in-house team member to a critical matter, and need to backfill their day-to-day work
- When you are faced with the convergence of increasing workloads, maxed-out bandwidth, and frozen headcounts
- When you need to gain highly specific subject matter expertise to tackle a challenge, and want your in-house team to be exposed to this knowledge development opportunity
For more perspective and guidance on rethinking how you approach rethinking legal resourcing, download our guide that outlines how to begin reimagining your legal team.
When assessing what type of work needs to be done, you also must ask, “Who is best suited to do this work?” At Axiom, we have over 20 years of experience matching lawyers with in-house work, and we ensure that our lawyers are a fit for your priorities, projects, and culture. We take into account the type of companies they've worked for, projects they’ve worked on, and their approach to working, to ensure they can quickly add value to your legal team.
Work with a partner who understands your business
When building a dynamic, efficient legal team, you need not go it alone. It’s important that you work with a trusted partner that understands the specifics of your business. At Axiom, we take a holistic approach, in order to ensure our lawyers seamlessly integrate into your business and ways of working, by providing our lawyers with onboarding, including setting up their computer and understanding your reporting systems, and ongoing training. Throughout their engagement, we provide proactive management and support, and meet with you regularly to understand how the engagement is progressing. As a result, 99% of our clients would recommend Axiom.
For more information about Axiom and how we support dynamic legal teams, download our new infographic.
If you are ready to learn about how you can reimagine your legal department and look beyond the duopoly of permanent in-house hires and law firms, get in touch with us at Axiom.