NEW JERSEY -- FranklyLegal wants to help the legal community find solutions to everyday problems.  Problems like: "I need some research on an issue for a potential client;" or "I need a brief on a current matter responding to a motion that parachuted on us Friday afternoon;" or "I need help prepping and covering multiple depositions;" or you might simply need dockets, documents filed of record, or could use a hand with e-filings in District Court or Chancery Court in DE.  What is constant is that you have neither the time nor the associates to help.  We think we have an answer.

One answer on the brink of exploding onto the legal scene is web-temping.   Contract or temporary attorneys are increasingly being used by solos, firms and law departments--and their work product, now greatly improved, is no longer a secret.  Today with the internet and its uses squarely upon the legal community, its professionals are finding help in cyberspace. We think we have one answer.

Joseph Heller was on to something, but for legal professionals contracting or temping can beat the Catch-22.  Ever walk into a job interview and face the question, “Do you have any experience?”  Unless you have the experience, your answer might be in the form of a question too, like “I know I need experience, but how can I get experience without a job?” 

Entry level legal professionals from paralegals to secretaries must deal squarely with Heller's catch.  Yet young lawyers, too, fresh out of law school are often faced with a similar version of this catch, even though it is expected.  Help exists in the form of legal recruiters and legal staffing firms—and the widening canyon of contract work. 

And at a time when recent events like law firm downsizing, corporate belt-tighening, legal budget cutting, client bottom-line squeezing and first-year compensation increases have sent tremors of uncertainty throughout the legal profession, one bright spot is a veritable army of temporary lawyers who are available on short notice to take on assignments.

It really is good to be a contract attorney today!  Times have indeed changed for them.  As the often cited 2006 American Lawyer article "A Temporary Solution" indicates, many firms no longer attach the dark stigma to temporary, or contract, lawyer work.  It used to be that they were diluting the quality of legal services generally because they were not good enough to hold “regular lawyer” jobs.  Not anymore.

Some commentators note that acceptance of temporary lawyers grew tremendously in the 1990s for a number of reasons. Among them include: 

• Economic growth fueled demand among law firms for experienced lawyers. Needing to get lawyers "on board" quickly, compelled many firms to consider employing lawyers on a contract basis.  Still, the floodgates were slow to open.
• Law firms that were hurt in earlier recessions – most recently in the early 1990s – were careful not to overstaff, and became amenable to hiring temporary lawyers to assist with the handling of cases. 
• Law firm clients – mindful of the bottom line even in good times – recommended their own counsel use temporary lawyers as a cost-effective solution to control fees.

What has changed now is that those firms who had positive experiences in the last decade are leading the push in these unsettled times to find the temporary help they need.  Not suprising, too, is just who is leading the push -- the largest law firms and their clients.  They understand the benefits and have streamlined the contract process with recruiting companies.  One trend to come out of this streamlining is the hybrid web-based contract attorney. 

In the past and indeed up to the present, law firms relied upon temp agencies to provide them with lists of potentially available temporary lawyers. The law firm, agency and temporary lawyer then engaged in a sometimes lengthy due diligence process that included complex screening, reference checking, resume content and license verification, writing sample collection, peer evaluation submisson and compensation documentation. This time-consuming equation for obtaining temporary legal help, though necessary, is more suited to hiring permanent employees. But these deliberate processes are ineffective and fail to address a critical need of the legal market -- where assignments need to be completed now.   As a result, the market is calling for the process to be refined and perfected into a science of web-based temp contracting as a buy/sell work product center. 

Franklylegal is among the first to recognize this market call and take the army of sourced, screened and verified contract lawyers and provide them a platform -- a virtual law firm on the web -- where they can work with law firms and other clients to actually complete work product on the web. 

An increasing number of solo lawyers and some small law firms are turning to the web – a resource that did not exist a decade ago – to find experienced, credentialed and competent temporary lawyers. But there is a disconnnect in the vetting of those professionals found in cyberspace.  Web-based temporary lawyers can often be put to work more quickly than can their counterparts from traditional temp agencies, but only after ensuring yourself of their competencies after a thorough background check.  Franklylegal brings these two seemingly divergent needs together and places them in a virtual environment.  With our web-based work product solutions platform, we have married the need for immediate top-notched help with concerns for security and integrity—especially in this post-911 Sarbanes-Oxley legal landscape.

FranklyLegal is at the brink of a large push in the industry.  The recent use of web-based temporary lawyers demonstrates a market shift in the way lawyers and firms use outsourced legal research and writing. The next big thing in the legal community, is not just instant research, writing and editing for legal memos that are readily accessible over the Internet twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but now includes complex motion practice, fact investigation, traditional and e-discovery, substantive court filings including federal and state e-filing, deposition preparation and coverage, local counsel stand-in court appearances.  In many cases our web-based temporary lawyers can begin working on projects the same day they are assigned.

Lawyers are quickly embracing web-based temporary lawyering thanks to the wireless mobile revolution, where lawyers find themselves frequently sending assignments over the web in order to meet a deadline or hurdle a crisis.  For example, today’s lawyers have sent the outline of a motion from a laptop in their hotel room to a temporary lawyer somewhere in America knowing that the final draft will be ready for filing in court the next day, if not by filed before midnight electronically, after his review and approval, while the lawyer entertains his client in the hotel restaurant.

While the temptation exists for some legal recruiting companies to bottom feed the market in its quest for talent acquisition, the quality of contract lawyers who are working or looking for work is generally high. The pool often includes lawyers with solid pedigree from local area schools like Penn, Villanova, Temple, and Rutgers, while others come from the top thirds of their classes, were on law review or already have big firm, judicial clerkship and/or law school teaching experience. Their areas of expertise run the gamut from A to Z—asbestos case to zoning matters.

If your not web temping, maybe you should be.

Tags: Contract | Hiring | Web Temping