- Rightsourcing remains one of the most effective ways to help your in-house counsel and legal department balance priorities.
- Corporate counsel can reduce burnout by auditing workloads, improving delegation, and using interim attorneys and alternative legal service providers (ALSPs).
- Empower in-house lawyers to focus on high-value legal matters while flexible support manages repeatable or lower-risk work.
In-house legal leaders, are you at your breaking point?
You’re not alone. Many general counsel, senior counsel, and other legal professionals are trying to accomplish more with limited resources. Most in-house legal departments anticipate rising demand, and nearly two-thirds cite workload pressure and limited resources as their biggest operational challenges.
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 walks 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.
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.
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, commercial contracts, or real estate agreements, 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. You can also go old-school and ask attorneys to track work with a notepad or spreadsheet, noting how frequently they get questions, projects that could’ve been handled by a non-lawyer, or a large influx 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.
Time-tracking tells part of the story, but it’s important to 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:
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.
Time estimate: 1 week
Once you have your team’s time to 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 and align them with each attorney’s legal practice focus.
If delayed or mishandled, high-priority tasks can significantly impact your bottom line. Imagine how a delay in closing a 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:
| Examples of High-Priority and Low-Priority Legal Tasks | |
| 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 |
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:
| Examples of Attorney and Non-Attorney Work | |
| 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) |
If mishandled, high-risk tasks have severe consequences, including regulatory penalties, financial costs, and reputational harm. Low-risk tasks have minimal potential downsides and are often routine in nature, such as conducting legal research or reviewing standard contracts.
Here are a few examples of each type:
| Examples of High-Risk and Low-Risk Tasks | |
| 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 |
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:
| Examples of Recurring and One-Off Tasks | |
| 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 |
Time estimate: 2 weeks
With your team’s tasks categorized, it’s time to make sure that your legal counsel’s work and ongoing initiatives are in the right hands.
When urgent matters arise and stretch your in-house team 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:
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 many years of experience 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, say you’re launching a major new product, and your in-house attorneys are overwhelmed with compliance and privacy issues. Instead of spending 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.
Create templates, playbooks, and training to help other departments in your business handle routine legal work on their own. Such tasks likely fall under these categories:
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.
Tap law firms for high-risk matters that require on-call attention and highly specialized expertise. These tasks likely fall under these categories:
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 extensive private practice 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.
Keep your core in-house legal team focused on strategic work that’s critical to the business. These tasks likely fall into these categories:
Say your company is facing a major regulatory investigation. Your in-house lawyers’ unmatched knowledge of your organization’s policies, risk areas, and areas of law involved will be critical to interfacing with the regulators and developing your strategy.
Empower your in-house attorneys and assistant general counsel to lead legal projects and strengthen the company’s risk management strategy, driving initiatives that could significantly impact its future and bottom line. If needed, they can always work with interim counsel or outside counsel for supplemental support.
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 law department’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.
As more in-house teams rely on flexible talent models, these FAQs address some of the most common questions legal leaders have about integrating interim counsel and ALSP support.
Start with a quarterly capacity review that maps legal matters by practice area. Adjust resourcing through ALSPs or interim attorneys to cover upcoming projects or product launches.
Typically, 1 to 2 weeks — far faster than recruiting for a full-time in-house position. Most interim counsel already have corporate law experience across multiple industries.
Trusted ALSPs follow strict NDAs, data security standards, and client-attorney privilege protocols. They often work directly with your chief compliance officer or head of legal to maintain governance standards.
Collaboration is key. Encourage in-house lawyers to partner closely with business operations leaders in HR, finance, and product. By embedding legal guidance early in company workflows, your legal department can prevent last-minute escalations and reduce the strain on general counsel and associate general counsel handling complex corporate law and employment law matters.
For law students interested in an in-house counsel role, learning to manage workload early is essential. The practice of law within a company often involves balancing competing priorities, including contract reviews, commercial compliance, risk assessments, and more.
One of the most valuable skills is knowing when to ask for help. Partnering with interim attorneys or flexible legal talent allows new and seasoned in-house lawyers to offload time-consuming tasks and stay focused on higher-value projects.
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