Lawyers On Demand (LOD) (the so-called ‘alternative legal services provider’ backed by UK-based firm Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP))  have released data – akin to an annual report – that indicates there is a growing need for ‘flexible resourcing’ within the UK legal market.

Among the more interesting data to be released is that:

• LOD’s turnover has increased by more than 500% (to circa £9m) in the past four years.
• LOD’s ‘On Call’ service (launched in June 2013) has completed more than 70 assignments in its first 18 months.
• more than 150 On Call lawyers have now completed LOD assigned assignments for more than 15 different law firms.
• LOD is offering clients retainer arrangement of between £2,000 to £50,000 per month, depending on their current resourcing needs.
• surging demand for On Call lawyers to work on specific transactions has led to the launch of On Call ‘transaction teams’.

Notably, LOD said the On Call teams:

“allowed private practice clients to scale up quickly and cost effectively, protecting their profitability on transactions and responding to client demand.”

So, what has all this to do with the Australian legal market you may ask?

Well, as it happens a number of ‘flexible legal resourcing’ providers have had ‘soft’ launches in the local market of late, including:

• Crowd & Co – whose tag-line is “Saving you time for what really matters”, and
• Lexvoco – with a tag-line of “Law on call”.

Both of which are in addition to the recent launch of Orbit by Corrs Chambers Westgarth, and both of which look to offer what appear to be very similar services to LOD’s On Call.

Add to this the recent (2 February 2015) decision by Allen & Overy to expand its ‘Peerpoint’ service to the Hong Kong market, and I think we can safely say that there is clearly a rising demand for flexible legal resourcing – globally, regionally, as well as locally here in Australia – and that all that now remains is for someone to come up with the appropriate acronym.