LEGAL INSIGHTS

Updates and advice for attorneys and law departments.

3 Questions (And Answers) to Improve Conversion Strategies with Temporary Staff

Engaging temporary attorneys for a wide variety of legal work and assignments can be an efficient and cost-effective method of maintaining productivity whenever your corporate law department budgets tighten. In fact, the right temporary attorneys are exceptional at implementing their experience and practice area proficiencies in ways that help you to do far more with less.

But what if you want to convert a temporary attorney into a permanent position? Do you need to classify attorneys as temp-to-hire from the beginning? What should you expect to spend compared to permanent talent from the start? Below, we’ll answer these and other questions law departments are asking as they recalibrate their workforce to better adapt to future challenges.

Which Budgets Are Available?

While permanent hires are paid with funds from capital budgets, any of your temporary workforce can be compensated from your operating budgets. This provides a reliable interim solution for any law department. Your temp-to-hire attorney can resolve challenges typically required of an in-house professional while reducing expenses until you have budget capacity.

Additionally, many organizations have used temp-to-hire arrangements to postpone employment related liabilities until new budgets are available. Working with a provisional resource enables your department to delay the responsibility of salary, wages, benefits, workers’ compensation, tax withholding, and other obligations until a time when finances allow.

How Long Do You Need Talent?

The duration of your placement isn’t a deal breaker for temporary attorneys. We have placed temporary attorneys in roles that last from a handful of weeks to a year or more. You can request to hire / convert the temporary lawyer to a permanent role at any time.

Here’s a true situation to illustrate the point. You oversee legal services for a healthcare company and need an attorney on-staff to review contracts for the steady stream of employees (from doctors and nurses to billers and administrators) coming into the organization, yet the budget for in-house legal personnel is currently exhausted. If you specify that a temporary attorney is to work within this role for a year, you can still extend the role beyond the initial engagement or convert the temporary attorney into permanent staff.

Do You Want to Audition Candidates Before You Hire?

Hiring has always been a delicate balance. Adding one wrong person can upend the culture and internal work ethic you’ve labored to create. Since there aren’t yet simulators to test out new attorneys prior to hiring them, a temp-to-hire approach is a great way to try before you buy, especially when you work with the right temporary legal staffing partner.

At Assigned Counsel, our recruiters are attorneys, and are able to knowledgeably vet candidates from our own first-hand experience. We conduct bar checks, law school checks, good standing checks, reference checks, and background checks for our placements. With 29 years of experience, we know how to spot qualified attorneys and as importantly, candidates who align with our clients.

With the right legal staffing agencies and a temp-to-hire approach, you can funnel far more candidates worthy of long-term relationships into your organization. That way, you can maintain high-quality across your deliverables while giving a trial run to see if your temporary attorneys are the right fit based on skills, experience, work ethic, and personality.

If you don’t want these temporary attorneys to get away, hire them. If at the end of the arrangement they’ve done their job adequately, thank them for their hard work when they leave at the end of the engagement. Either way allows your law department to manage your workforce through unpredictable times – while keeping your costs under control.

How do you know when you should convert a temp attorney to permanent staff? Check out the story of one of our clients to see what it looks like when you bring an excellent temporary attorney into your organization.

Check out our case study

Related Articles

Making The Best Choice: Outside Law Firm Or Legal Staffing Agency

Never Worked with a Temporary Attorney Before? Here’s How to Balance In-House and Outsourced Resources

How to Maximize the Budget for Your Law Department – with Temporary Legal Staff

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