A smarter, cheaper way for in-house teams
to manage their workload

We understand what it’s like to run a legal team under constant pressure. Endless demands, limited resources, and little room to move. Permanent headcount is hard to secure, yet the work keeps piling up.

For years, we’ve helped clients meet these challenges through secondments, embedding lawyers into legal teams.

But sometimes, even more flexibility is needed. That’s why we’ve introduced retainers: a scalable and budget-friendly way to access experienced legal support, when you don’t need them to work set hours.

Here are ten reasons why legal teams are switching from using law firms to our retainer model:

1. It’s a lot cheaper than briefing a firm

It’s now not uncommon for partner rates to hit four figures per hour. At those rates most in-house teams are forced to be very selective about what gets briefed out.

2. They get results – fast

Most advice from law firms is risk-averse, with the #1 goal being to insulate the firm from potential liability. But providing advice to “weigh up the risks and make a call” does not address the need of most legal teams. They need people who understand their business and aren’t afraid to make a commercial call. People like our retainer lawyers.

3. You don’t need to babysit them

In-house lawyers don’t have time to act as a go-between, briefing the law firm, waiting for a reply, translating risk-averse legal advice into more commercial guidance and then repeating the loop. This doubles the work and time involved. Our retainer lawyers jump straight in and deal with it, without any need for hand-holding.

4. Cost certainty

Retainers involve a set hours per month, at a fixed price. This removes the guesswork from managing the legal team budget. And if you need more support, these hours can be flexed up or down.

5. An extra set of hands without increasing headcount

Many legal teams simply can’t hire additional employees, either because they lack budget or because their boss has a firm view on what ‘size’ a legal team should be. Using a retainer lawyer allows GCs to bypass this obstacle and the associated political dogfight.

6. Support for growing businesses

Growing companies need legal support but may not be ready for a full-time GC. Clients are using our retainer model to provide scalable support as the business needs grow.

7. Flexible support for projects

Projects create spikes in legal workload. Retainers offer a reliable way to bring in commercial, specialist expertise that can scale up or down as needs change. This can either be to support the project or backfill work vacated by an internal lawyer working on the project.

8. Reduce team burnout and retention risk

Retainers help relieve the load on overstretched legal teams, reducing pressure on existing team members which can lead to burnout or unhappy lawyers leaving.

9. Free up time for strategic work

Too often we see senior lawyers drowning in BAU work. When they’re stuck in the weeds they can’t get to more strategic priorities. Our retainer lawyers can help manage routine matters, allowing the internal team to focus on higher-impact work.

10. They’re great people who are also great at their job

We’re firm believers in long-term relationships with our lawyers and clients. So we take great care to place only lawyers that we think are great at their job, and are also terrific people. We love hearing how much our clients love our lawyers, and our lawyers enjoy working with our clients.

If any of this resonates, a retainer could be a great fit for your team.

And getting started is simple. Share your needs with us, and we’ll do the rest. Front Foot will provide you with experienced lawyers who can work independently and deliver the outcomes you need, for fixed timeframes or ongoing.

To learn more please contact Jahnna McKeag (Galbally), Associate Director, Resourcing on 0412 340 818.