History
Our Lawyers on Demand programme was launched in April 2007 to offer clients a creative resourcing solution.
Traditionally, law firms have offered legal advice on specific transactions or assignments and billed on an hourly rate. This model works for resourcing many client needs but ignores the wide variety of requirements within in-house legal teams. For example, there are often needs to cover special internal projects or maternity leave or other reasons why extra resource is required on either a part-time or full-time basis. Many law firms, including BLP, seek to help bridge the gap through the use of secondments. Where it works effectively, secondments benefit both the client and the law firm. However, demand for secondments has always outstripped supply and it is clear that, with both in-house legal and private practice teams coming under increased cost and resourcing pressure, secondments alone cannot provide an answer.
Rather than approach this issue as a problem, we viewed it as an opportunity and BLP partner, Simon Harper, and our head of recruitment, Jonathan Brenner, began to look for innovative ways of meeting clients’ resourcing needs.
At the same time, they were aware of the growing number of talented lawyers looking for more flexible ways of working who were unable to find satisfactory options with the traditional models on offer. Many of these individuals are highly skilled and want to continue to practise law, but were unable to find quality roles that offer the flexibility to fit with their other commitments.
