Key Takeaways:

• Feeling overworked and understaffed? Rightsourcing is the secret to reclaiming your in-house legal team’s time (and sanity).
• Corporate legal departments: Audit your workloads, delegate strategically, and leverage flexible talent to boost productivity without burning out your top lawyers.
• Stop letting your best in-house attorneys get bogged down in tasks. Follow this step-by-step guide to optimizing how work gets done in your corporate legal department.

In-house legal leaders, are you at your breaking point? 

You’re not alone. Many GCs and in-house attorneys are trying to accomplish more with limited resources. But at the same time, they know they need to keep workloads sustainable if they want to retain their in-house talent. 

We’re here to help with steps to complete rightsourcing—choosing the right people to get your team’s work done at the best cost. This article will walk you through a framework for assessing your team’s workload, delegating tasks effectively, and leveraging flexible talent to extend your department’s impact. 

Let’s dive in.

Do a workload time audit

Time estimate: 2-4 weeks

The first step is to see exactly where your team is spending its time and effort so you can pinpoint areas where the department can be more efficient and effective.

Understand how your attorneys are really spending their time 

We know attorneys bristle at time tracking, but frame this as an opportunity for improvement rather than a punitive measure. Emphasize that the goal is to help the team work more efficiently and be able to allocate time to the matters that matter most. 

For example, you might find that multiple team members are working on NDAs, recreating the wheel with each new customer’s redlines. Or, one department could be taking up most of your legal team’s time, a clear sign to create resources that reduce their reliance on legal.

There are many user-friendly tools—such as Toggl, RescueTime, and Clockify—that make it easy for attorneys to track their time without disrupting their workflows. Or, go old-school and ask attorneys to track their work with a notepad or spreadsheet, noting how frequently they get questions or projects that could’ve been handled by a non-lawyer or get a surge of work. 

Aim to track time for at least two representative weeks, ideally up to four weeks, to get a representative sample of your team’s workload. 

Meet with each attorney to ask how they feel about their work

Time-tracking tells part of the story, but it’s crucial to also confirm insights from the data with qualitative feedback. Set up one-on-ones with each team member to discuss how they feel about their time records and workload. Ask questions like:

• What tasks do you feel you’re doing too often?
• Which tasks do you find particularly unfulfilling?
• What tasks on your plate don’t necessarily require a lawyer’s input?

These conversations will highlight what work might be ripe for delegation or reprioritization. For example, you know that escalations from the procurement team are becoming an issue if most of your attorneys say their calls and emails are bogging them down. 

Categorize your in-house team’s tasks

Time estimate: 1 week

Once you have your team’s time audit data and qualitative input, bucket the work into priority, expertise, risk, and frequency categories. This will help you determine the most efficient way to handle your team’s tasks.

High-priority VS Low-priority

If delayed or mishandled, high-priority tasks can significantly impact your bottom line.  Imagine how a delay in closing key licensing agreement can stall a product launch and all the deadlines built around it. Low-priority tasks don’t have the same time, revenue, or production pressures. 

Here are a few examples of each type:

High-priority	Low-priority
Negotiating key customer contracts	Updating templates with minor tweaks
Advising on high-stakes litigation	Reviewing routine vendor agreements
Ensuring regulatory compliance	Attending non-essential meetings

Requires attorney expertise VS non-attorney work

Attorney expertise is necessary for tasks that involve interpreting laws, providing legal advice, and representing the company in legal matters. If the work is administrative or doesn’t require legal judgment, it may be appropriate for non-attorneys or technology solutions.

Here are a few examples of each type:

Requires attorney expertise	Non-attorney work
Counseling the C-suite and board on legal risks	Answering questions around existing HR policies
Structuring complex transactions	Maintaining contract databases (could be delegated to legal operations)
Developing legal strategy for litigation	Reviewing and routing your company’s template NDAs (could be automated with a contract review tool)

High-risk VS low-risk

High-risk tasks have severe consequences if mishandled—like regulatory penalties, financial costs, and reputational harm. Low-risk tasks have minimal potential downsides and are often more routine in nature.

Here are a few examples of each type:

High-risk	Low-risk
Bet-the-company litigation	Conducting research on legal and regulatory changes
Mergers and acquisitions	Processing routine vendor contracts
Regulatory investigations	Conducting trademark searches

Recurring VS one-off

Identify work that happens on a predictable cadence versus ad hoc projects. Recurring tasks are often tied to ongoing business processes or reporting cycles, while one-off projects have a defined start and end point. This will help you determine what tasks need support on an ongoing basis.

Here are a few examples of each type:

Recurring	One-off
Quarterly board meeting preparation	Implementing a new contract management system
Monthly sales contract reviews	Updating an employee handbook to reflect a new employment law
Annual compliance training	Acquiring a new business entity

Delegate work strategically

Time estimate: 2 weeks

With your team’s tasks categorized, it’s time to make sure that your attorneys’ work is in the right hands.

Interim counsel: Attorney-level work of any priority

When urgent matters come up and your in-house team is stretched thin, flexible counsel is the way to go. If it’s all hands on deck and you’re hoping to still make strides on those back-burner projects, turn to interim support. It’s perfect for in-house teams that need closer collaboration than outside counsel provides but lack the budget and time to recruit, interview, and hire a full-time attorney.

Interim attorney tasks typically fall under these categories: 

• High or low-priority
• Attorney expertise 
• High or low-risk
• Recurring or one-off

It’s really up to you! A solid flexible legal talent provider will work to understand what it is you need. From there, they’ll pair you with interim attorneys who have top-tier expertise and can seamlessly plug in as embedded team members. 

Even better, interim attorneys don’t come with the long-term costs and commitments of full-time hires. You can access a versatile talent pool for projects as they arise when it makes sense for your team. Interim attorneys can handle any risk level you would be comfortable managing in-house with your own FTEs.

For example, imagine you’re launching a major new product, and your in-house attorneys are overwhelmed with compliance and privacy issues. Instead of spending more time and money to recruit and hire a full-time employee, your team could engage an interim attorney who specializes in product counseling. Or, you might deploy a flex counsel who can take your teams’ routine matters off their plate while they focus on the new product. 

By using interim counsel, you can cost-effectively add capacity and expertise to your team without the long-term commitment of a full-time hire. 

Non-legal employees: Non-attorney, recurring tasks

Create templates, playbooks, and training to help other departments in your business handle routine legal work on their own. These tasks likely fall under these categories:

• Low-priority
• Non-attorney
• Low-risk
• Recurring 

Say the sales team consistently comes to legal with contract review questions. Your legal department could create a training session that walks sales reps and managers through using an automated contract review tool, like Screens.ai. Paragon offers access to this tool in our Contract AI Bundle package. 

Don’t have time to build training programs and playbooks? Consider using interim attorneys to create these resources for your company (more on using flex counsel below).  

By enabling other departments to handle routine tasks, legal will reserve their time for more complex projects.

Outside counsel: High-risk, niche work

Tap law firms for high-risk matters that require on-call attention and highly specialized expertise. These tasks likely fall under these categories:

• High-priority
• Attorney expertise
• High-risk
• One-off

Imagine your company is facing a patent infringement lawsuit. The in-house team has general litigation experience, but they don’t have deep expertise in patent law. To give your company the best possible defense, you hire a law firm with a renowned intellectual property practice and experience litigating similar cases in the relevant jurisdiction.

In these high-stakes situations, consider using interim counsel to back up your team on the matters building up at home. Flex attorneys can handle your team’s day-to-day work while your full-time attorneys are focused on the work that will save the company.

In-house counsel: High-priority, strategic work

Keep your core in-house legal team focused on strategic work that’s critical to the business. These tasks likely fall into these categories:

• High-priority
• Attorney expertise
• High-risk
• Recurring or one-off

Say your company is facing a major regulatory investigation. Your in-house lawyers’ unmatched knowledge of your organization’s policies, risk areas, and history with the regulating bodies will be critical to interfacing with the regulators and developing your strategy.   

Empower your in-house attorneys to lead legal projects that could significantly impact the company’s future and bottom line. If needed, they can always work with interim counsel or outside counsel for supplemental support.

The bottom line

At the end of the day, rightsourcing isn’t about going with the lowest-cost option or defaulting to what’s always been done. It’s about picking the talent solution that will execute the task at the best value. 

You can do just that by following the steps above. Take control of your team’s workload by understanding exactly what’s on their plates and reallocating tasks internally and externally.  

And if you need support, Paragon is here to help. With a network of experienced interim counsel, we help legal teams tackle their biggest challenges and lighten the load on the core team—all without adding permanent headcount.

Reach out to our team today.