Outsourcing the work of legal support staff has risen in popularity in recent years, as law firms and legal departments seek to reduce costs in any way they can. However, organizations that outsource may be overlooking the significant benefits of supplementing your current workforce with legal support temporaries.
While outsourcing is a common topic in the business world, insourcing is not as well known. Insourcing offers firms the chance to handle excessive workload in-house by bringing in necessary talent, rather than farm out tasks to a third party outside of the organization – or even outside the country.
But chances are, your internal staff is already stretched pretty thin. How can you increase your internal bandwidth far enough to get everything done? Add temporary staff. When you supplement your existing staff with skilled, professional temporary employees you get the benefits of outsourcing with the control of on-site employees.
If you need legal support staff for document review or other tasks, consider “insourcing” rather than “outsourcing” the talent you need. Contracting temporary internal legal support staff offers a number of benefits, including:
Improved Quality
Ideally, your legal support staff will make decisions that mirror those that senior lawyers would make if they were able to review each step themselves. When you “outsource” document review or other legal support tasks, you delegate this work to individuals who may not have the full range of skills and experience necessary to make the decisions that are best for your clients or your organization. Rarely will you meet “outsourced” legal support staff, and specific instructions may be ignored or overlooked. Insourced employees work under your supervision, so there is no degradation in the quality of work.
Increased Value
Legal organizations that outsource support tasks often do so because the “bottom line” financial cost seems lower than the cost of hiring another full-time staff member. If the results produced are of insufficient quality, however, insourced employees may be the perfect compromise. They may command a higher rate of pay than outsourced – particularly offshore – employees, but they are more cost-effective than hiring full-time permanent staff.
In short, when you insource the people you need and train them to focus on your organization’s priorities, you place your law firm or legal department in a much stronger position to provide effective services.
Long-Term Benefit
Firms that contract experienced legal support staff create the opportunity to address both long-and short-term projects. Insourced members of the legal support team strike a perfect balance between the affordability of outsourcing and the quality control of adding a permanent employee. With insourcing you will never need to sacrifice quality for savings.
To identify facets of your firm that can benefit from insourcing, talk to your staffing partner about creating a strategic staffing plan. The recruiters at Kent Legal can help you find outstanding legal support talent in Toronto and beyond. Contact us today to learn more!