For some, the typical career development path of a lawyer has remained static for too long: one can either go into private practice and spend years climbing up the greasy pole to become a partner, or become an in-house lawyer and attempt to move to bigger and better corporates. But now a third option is gaining in popularity – become a freelance contract lawyer.
Freelance work provides many benefits that a traditional legal career cannot offer: lawyers can work from home, choose the number of hours they wish to work and vary their clientele and professional experience from one job to the next. Added to that, for some there’s the potential to earn the equivalent of their former full-time salaries while working less. The experience can provide a steep learning curve for those lawyers at the start of their careers and a valuable lifeline to those made redundant or considering semi-retirement.
London-based lawyer Rakhi Samani has been a contract lawyer for the past 10 years and also works as a consultant at NWL Solicitors. “I qualified and worked at a firm for about six months and then started work as a locum. I’ve never looked back,” she says. “Freelance work suits my personality. I never liked the idea of staying in one place and doing the same kind of work every day for the rest of my life. This way, I can get involved in different areas of commercial law and vary my workload and clientele, which helps to keep things fresh,” she adds.
Even law firms are providing interim lawyers to their own clients. Eversheds’ temp lawyer service Eversheds Agile has recently been made a permanent fixture at the firm, with almost 80 lawyers on the initiative’s books eight months into a planned one-year pilot. Other successful ventures include Axiom and Berwin Leighton Paisner’s (BLP’s) Lawyers on Demand service.
Sameera Khan, a 33-year-old freelance lawyer based in Brighton, has been a part of BLP’s Lawyers on Demand scheme since October 2010 after a former colleague recommended it to her. “Becoming a freelance lawyer was completely my choice. I had been working full-time as the sole in-house legal adviser for Armajaro, a commodities trading and hedge fund manager, and I found it increasingly challenging to support the whole business on my own while being a relatively junior lawyer,” says Khan.
“I wanted more variety – not just in my role, but also outside of work. Now I work on three to six-month assignments as a consultant under BLP’s brand, I have the time to get more involved in community enterprises as well as my own business interests and the salary I get is competitive for the market.”
Khan believes that there are tremendous career development opportunities for those who opt to take on contract work. “I’m on my third assignment now working as a commercial lawyer and sole in-house counsel for a standalone subsidiary of a large telecoms company, which gives me access to the board and the chief executive. I have only been professionally qualified for three years and it would be rare to have these kinds of opportunities so early in your career normally, so I’m happy with the way work is turning out.”
Some law firms are keen to try to establish a business model using contract lawyers to enable them to provide national coverage for legal services. Guildford-based Setfords Solicitors, for example, uses a network of 80 self-employed lawyers nationwide to provide a wide range of legal services in their local area. The firm provides back-office and secretarial support to its network, as well as professional indemnity coverage and access to paid-for online resources. Lawyers can then concentrate on doing the legal work without worrying about the administrative side of the business. Members are responsible for finding their own clients and earn between 50%-80% of the fees they bill, depending on the amount of income they bring in.
Chris Setford, the firm’s business development manager, says that the arrangement suits those who want to work more flexibly, and claims that lawyers can earn as much – or more – than they would at a typical law firm. “In many firms, a lawyer would need to bill around £150,000 a year to hit his target,” says Setford. “If a lawyer billed that within our network, he could expect to take home around £80,000, which is significantly higher than he would get at a firm. Our model allows lawyers to work for half the amount of time to make the same money they were making as part of a firm,” he says.
Experts believe that demand for contract lawyers is set to grow and that more lawyers will opt out of the traditional career route to go freelance. Janet Taylor-Hall, global head of legal process outsourcing at support services provider Integreon, says that the market for temporary lawyers is buoyant. The company has 760 lawyers worldwide on its books, and has moved from providing interim paralegal services to full-blown specialist legal work.
“Lawyers are looking for an alternative model to the normal legal career development path,” says Taylor-Hall. “Some newly-qualified lawyers like contract work because it gives them some experience before they find a permanent position, but others simply like it because it can provide new opportunities and challenges and they don’t want to work full-time for one employer. The number of contract lawyers is set to grow, that’s for sure,” she says.
Emma Walker, senior manager of the legal division for the Midlands at professional temp placement recruitment consultancy Venn Group, says that about 95% of the contract lawyers the company has on its books are “there because they want to be” and that they cover a wide age spectrum – from those in their 20s to people in their 50s. “There are some contract lawyers who do the work to fill in a gap between jobs after being made redundant, but the vast majority do it because they can make more money, gain more experience and work flexibly,” she says.
Walker says that rates vary from between £15 to £60 per hour, which includes a contribution for holiday pay. However, rates can reach as high as £600 per day if the position is for a senior management role in a law firm, for example. The agency tends to provide three-month placements, but Walker says that one contract lawyer has been working with the same client continuously for nearly four years.
Despite the current economic situation in the UK, the freelance legal services market is still “candidate driven”, says Walker. “In London, private practices are taking on more contract lawyers than ever before, while in the Midlands there is plenty of scope for work in the public sector. Local authorities, for example, have become big recruiters of contract lawyers, particularly in specialist areas such as child protection and commercial contracts, which pay higher rates.”
However, there are some downsides: contract lawyers may have to travel further afield for work. “We try to locate work as close as we can to where the lawyer is based, but sometimes it isn’t easy. One lawyer is based in Glasgow but is travelling to the Midlands for work,” Walker recounts.
Some contract lawyers think that the market is getting tougher, and that rates are tightening. “There are a lot of law firms active in the market, and a lot of contract lawyers out there doing the same thing, so it is hard,” says Christopher Parr, 52, who has been a contract lawyer for nearly four years after leaving Collyer Bristow. Prior to working in private practice, he spent 20 years working in a series of in-house counsel roles at companies such as agricultural company Monsanto, but believes that he will not be employed full-time again.
Parr admits that it is hard trying to find new work. He has one regular client but adds that the rest of the work is piecemeal and comes from personal recommendations and networking rather than through marketing initiatives. Social media website LinkedIn has also proved useful.
“I’ve written just about every kind of business contract that there is at least once, so clients will pay for that skill,” says Parr. “I can earn – on a good day – an hourly rate of £215. Without that level of expertise or those years of experience, I really don’t know how young qualified lawyers that have left private practice with just a year or two’s experience can manage,” he adds.
Managing cashflow is difficult, and other contract lawyers have admitted that without the support of a spouse, it can be a financially vicarious career choice. But Parr says that besides late or irregular payment, clients are squeezing harder to get more add-on services, free consultancy and a reduction in fees once the legal work is finished.
He says: “Receiving payment on time is a problem. Also, as I work in trying to secure funding for entrepreneurial businesses or in rebuilding them, I am occasionally offered an equity stake in the business rather than a straight fee. For example, I have been working on one particular project for nearly two years and have not seen a penny from it yet. This might sound like accepting magic beans instead of hard cash, but being the eternal optimist, if just one of these companies succeeds I can retire early and rich – or that’s the hope.”
Other contract lawyers say that there has definitely been a downturn in the volume of work and the rates of pay in the legal services market over the past few years. “When the going was good you could command £300 per hour for more specialised work, such as arranging property finance,” says Samani. “The rates now vary between £25 and £200 per hour.”
She believes that the liberalisation of the legal services market will make it much more difficult for lawyers to carry out generalist work. “The introduction of alternative business structures, allowing high street names such as WHSmith and Tesco to sell legal services, has already made the market more competitive for freelance lawyers and has deflated rates,” says Samani. “Why would someone use a lawyer they have never heard of when they can go and get the service at the local supermarket?”
