Quick Tips for Onboarding Flexible Legal Talent

Effective Tips for Onboarding Flexible Legal Talent

Effective attorney onboarding sets the tone for a fruitful and collaborative working relationship. A streamlined onboarding process ensures a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities and facilitates a seamless integration into your company or firm culture and operations. Moreover, effective onboarding empowers your attorney to quickly add value while allowing you to focus on critical tasks without compromising efficiency.

For engagement-based attorneys, whose scope of work is specialized and their relationship contractual for the short- or long-term, an efficient onboarding process offers numerous advantages. Guidance on team structures, tools, processes, and expectations can accelerate their ability to contribute swiftly effectively and free up your valuable time to attend to other pressing matters.

Outlined below are three practical tips for optimizing the onboarding process for contract attorneys.

Set clear expectations.

Defining project scope, deliverables, timelines, and performance parameters serves as a roadmap for synchronized efforts. Ensure your attorney has the lay of the land by sharing an overview of your organization’s culture, values, and mission, helping your attorney understand the work environment and operational approach.

• Discuss your expectations with your engaged attorney to ensure you both are in sync on objectives, deliverables, and deadlines.
• Contract attorneys may have different work schedules and availability than permanent employees, especially if working a less-than-full-time engagement. It is important to establish expectations for available working hours each week based on the scope and needs of the role. On a related note, outline how you would like your engaged attorney to record and submit their time and ensure they have access to follow this process throughout their engagement.

Facilitate attorney success with appropriate tools and resources.

Think about what tools, technology, and resources your attorney will need to perform their work effectively. You can reduce the time it takes to reach optimal performance levels by arranging access and training for required hardware, software, research tools, and the appropriate system login credentials and access rights in advance.

• Consider sharing relevant work samples, templates, and precedents that will be a useful resource for your attorney to follow as a guide for established processes and procedures.
• Arrange introductions to key stakeholders and departments with whom your attorney may interact, such as finance, HR, or IT. This helps the attorney understand the broader organizational context and relevant stakeholders.

Communicate openly.

Encouraging an open exchange of ideas, collaboration, and constructive feedback nurtures a supportive environment and reduces timely back-and-forth. It also expedites your attorneys’ integration into the team and ongoing projects. See if any of these communication tactics make sense to try for your specific role or situation:

• Because your time is in high demand, pull in other team members who can be available to answer questions or provide guidance. Pair the attorney with a colleague or small network of team members who can serve as go-to contacts for information or assistance if needed.
• Schedule regular touch points as the attorney gets up to speed to gauge progress and help address challenges or questions. Try weekly touch bases for the first month of the engagement – even if it is just 10 minutes long. You may find that these meetings save time by reducing or even eliminating disruptive back-and-forth via email or chat.
• Share timely constructive feedback and compliment work well done. Ask for equal feedback from your engaged attorney so you know how you can best support them in their role.
• Reach out to your flexible legal talent provider for suggestions and advice. Not only are they familiar with the attorney and your selection process for the role, but they also speak with a wide variety of legal departments, law firms, and legal professional candidates and are in a great position to offer advice to ensure the engagement is a success.

Effective onboarding isn’t just about getting the individual up to speed—it’s about setting the foundation for a productive working relationship that benefits you, your law firm or legal department, and ultimately your clients.

By implementing these three tips, you can expedite your attorney’s understanding of internal workflows and procedures, equip them with comprehensive knowledge of client expectations, and significantly minimize errors and revisions. That means you can allocate less time providing guidance or explaining operations and more time focusing on other important matters.

Are you looking for a top-tier attorney or other legal professional to join your company or law firm? Let Latitude find a solution to meet your needs. Contact us, and we will be back in touch fast.