Chicago Legal Staffing and Recruiting

Why Hire a Legal Staffing and Recruiting Company for Temporary Lawyers?

Chicago is home to some of the most innovative startups in the country. With entrepreneurs delving into digital technology and other fast-paced industries, it's not easy to find the time or resources small businesses need to devote to finding legal help. But if you want to get your budding business off on the right foot, you need to hire a lawyer at some point.

Fortunately, legal staffing companies provide the talent pool you need to find the top attorneys in whichever field you need. These candidates come from experienced backgrounds, including prestigious law schools like Yale and Harvard Law, and they have already been vetted for you.

Hiring a temporary lawyer gives you the flexibility your startup needs without the full commitment of hiring your own attorney. This approach helps you save money and streamline your legal services. Contract attorneys typically charge per hour or a flat fee depending on the legal staffing company with which they're contracted. You simply can't hire your company's own attorney and enjoy the savings temporary lawyers offer.

What Can a Temporary Lawyer Do for an In-House Legal Department or Law Firm?

A Chicago-based company might enlist the help of a temporary lawyer for multiple reasons. For starters, a tech company might need extra help with an intellectual property rights issue. But if it doesn't have the funds to hire another in-house lawyer, turning to a legal staffing and recruiting company gives them the qualified temp attorney they need with experience in intellectual property law.

Even if your company has an in-house law department, hiring temporary counsel can help:

• Supplement the department's knowledge
• Offer litigation support during legal actions
• Handle workload increases
• Draft and review contracts and other documents
• Lower the department's overhead by reducing full-time staff
• Help with intellectual property (IP) licensing
• Allow you to complete large-scale projects without hiring more full-time staff
• Ensure mergers and acquisitions (M&A) due diligence
• Defend or prosecute against trademark and patent violations
• Minimize payroll costs and employment liability
• Assist with corporate restructuring
• Complete real estate transactions
• Assist with contract administration
• Help a new company develop its corporate governance

Temporary attorneys have experience working on a range of legal issues. When you hire one knowledgeable in these fields, you can be confident you're making a good decision for your company and the in-house legal department.

How to Interview and Hire a Temporary Lawyer?

When you hire a temp lawyer through a legal staffing and recruiting company, they do all the legwork for you. Every candidate is fully vetted and proven a good match for your particular assignment. But while the company will suggest the best candidates, you are ultimately in charge of which attorney you hire.

Start the interview process by asking the lawyer how he or she came to be working in a temporary arrangement? Perhaps they recently relocated or are working at another firm part-time. You should also ask about their experience as a temporary attorney. Have they done temporary assignments before?

You also need to ask about the lawyer's full range of experiences, not just in the field in which you need legal help. For instance, if you're hiring a temporary lawyer to help prosecute a copyright infringement case, ask if he or she has ever represented any of your company's competitors.

Other basic questions to ask include how much the lawyer charges, which law school they attended, and whether he or she is a member of The Chicago Bar Association. It's always better to ask more questions to make sure you're hiring the best lawyer for your specific legal need.