Your Legal Team Needs Help: 2023 In-House Hiring Survey

Where are legal departments experiencing the most pain?

Both in-house lawyers and legal ops staff fear their departments do not have the right level of staff support or the right mix of legal experience to do the job. And both say they are squandering time on hiring and managing talent and their outside counsel.

The lack of bandwidth is the top-ranked issue for in-house counsel and number two for legal ops specialists–and no wonder: 90% of legal department professionals said their teams are under-resourced.

Even if they did have the budget, nearly all in-house lawyers and legal ops leaders said they have had difficulty finding and hiring lawyers who had the expertise to meet the department’s current and future needs–and nearly half of each group reported that the process was very or extremely difficult. 

Legal Department Resourcing in Turbulent Economic Times 

Almost two-thirds of in-house counsel say their departments experienced large budget cuts, compared to one-third of legal ops professionals. Clearly, all legal department staff are feeling the strain of a more cost-controlled environment, although lawyers appear to be feeling the cuts more deeply. Perhaps this is another indication of the impact an ever-increasing workload is having on the morale of counsel. 

In the past, an overburdened corporate legal team might have sent its overflow work to law firms. Most large law firms offer high-quality expertise across many practice areas, and they can be especially effective in bet-the-company deals or litigation. Yet deploying a firm to handle less exceptional work may not be the most efficient use of a legal department’s limited budget–particularly at a time when hourly rates are increasing by the largest percentages in 15 years, according to a recent Wells Fargo report.

Pain Points: 4 Resourcing Issues that Hurt the Most

Both lawyers and legal ops staff fear their departments do not have the right level of  staff support or the right mix of legal experience to do the job. And both say they are squandering time on hiring and managing talent and their outside counsel. 

1. The legal department does not have the appropriate amount of staffing bandwidth.
2. The department does not have the right legal experience on the team.
3. The department spends too much time hiring and managing the right talent. 
4. The legal department spends too much time managing law firms.

A Modern Approach: Legal Resourcing in the Digital Age 

We know legal departments are understaffed, and we know that more traditional means of hiring legal talent are failing to meet their resourcing needs. Legal departments need a new, more modern method of accessing talent, one that enables:

• Access to a large universe of vetted lawyers
• Speed to hire and quick onboarding
• Enhanced cost visibility and spend reduction

Leveraging the Findings in this Report 

To resolve the challenges identified in this report, legal department leaders will need to rethink how they meet their resourcing demands.

The good news–and perhaps the key headline finding of this report–is that both in-house counsel and legal ops professionals say they are open to finding alternative solutions to address their staffing needs. This includes leveraging digital platforms to access a greater variety of legal talent, control spending, and reduce the difficulties associated with hiring and onboarding lawyers.

Download this report to unlock the comprehensive insights and perspectives you need to evaluate your current resourcing challenges and ways you can find, hire, and retain top legal talent for your department while maintaining cost efficiency.