private practice

Peak Load – The Rise of the Contractor Lawyer in Private Practice Law Firms

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We have seen a rise in the use of contractors in more senior legal practitioner roles in recent years. This has been supported by firms moving to introduce their own contract legal businesses to manage fluctuations in workflow.”

Marc Totaro – National Manager, Professional Services Business & Private Banking; Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Earlier this month the Commonwealth Bank published the 2019 edition of its Legal Market Pulse. While the Report relates specifically to law firms and the legal industry in Australia, it contains a number of take-outs and trends that I believe can be applied more broadly across the global industry that is ‘legal services’.

One of these, as the quote from Marc Totaro above indicates, is the documented rise in the Report in the use of contractors within law firms themselves.

Until recently I had not seen much traction with suppliers of legally qualified contractors cracking the private practice market. Don’t get me wrong, I knew who Crowd & Co were and I had read about the arrangement between Lawyers on Demand and DLA Piper. But the actual use of contractors to back-stop in private practice hadn’t really registered with me.  Part of the reason for my scepticism here had been centred around the issue of:

Why would law firms with relatively poor utilisation rates want or need the use of contractors?

My thinking here changed though following a conversation I had with Katherine Thomas, CEO of Free Range Lawyers and  ex-Vario (Pinsent Masons). Katherine assured me – and convinced me – that the tide was changing and that law firms were now making use of access to highly skilled contractors for both locums and projects as part of their core HR strategy. And when I got to thinking about it a little more I realised that poor utilisation rates would actually be a really good reason why you would want to have access to contractors at it would give you greater flexibility in managing your teams’ resourcing.

In any event, the Commbank Report would appear to provide anecdotal evidence to Katherine’s views in that law firms are indeed making greater use of contractors. What’s probably more encouraging – from Katherine’s financial point of view – though is the fact that biggest area of year-on-year increase in usage is at the Senior Associate/Senior Lawyer (4+ years) level.

And in my view, the contractor trend is probably one of the biggest insights to come out of this Report – although others are writing a lot more around others things contain in the Report so make sure you read it!

Now if only I had been smart enough to read that market trend!

As always though, interested in your thoughts/views/feedback.

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BTI’s The Mad Clientist: New Business for the Taking: Corporate Counsel Shift Work Back to Law Firms

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In private practice and looking for a good news story to read this weekend? Then BTI Consulting Group’s The Mad Clientist may well just have it.

According to his latest blog post,

“After 4 years of feverishly bringing work in-house [following the GFC] corporate counsel are reversing course.”

Is that cries of joy I hear ring out?!? If so, the news only gets better. Because not only are in-house counsel shifting work back to law firms, but the type of work they are sending out is the sweet spot big ticket matters. Indeed, according to BTI’s study of 322 corporate counsel, “Chief Legal Officers expect a tripling of bet-the-company litigation, increases in class actions, and substantially more securities litigation.”

But before you go clambering over your other partners to get on the phone to your in-house counsel contacts, keep in mind that (1) the study was done in the USA, and (2) BTI is of the opinion that:

“The big winners will present themselves to clients as strategists and discuss risks and exposures before the matters ever start. The bigger winners will discuss prevention, potential settlement postures and learn about the business risks posed by the new matters.”

Putting that aside for a second though, we can but hope that the tide is turning here and that the pendulum has once again swung back in favour of private practice. But in order to be best placed to take advantage of this development, you need to be working through your client plans (including engagement and communication actions) now so that you can be ready to take full advantage of whatever 2016 throws at you!

Until then, “have a great weekend!”