Law Firm Or In-House Legal Team? What Should You Choose?

Starting a company with more investments or less is not that important as having a legal help 24/7 for every decision you take. Many get confused or have difficulties in choosing whether to go for an in-house legal team or outsource all legal work to a law firm.

Choosing to go with the in-house legal team: things to consider

  • You can have the facility of a hands-on risk management team, which helps identify matters before they escalate into a crisis.
  • They manage increasing cost of lawyering.
  • The in-house legal counsel will essentially have only one client i.e. your company. This could be a plus as your company will be the only priority.
  • An in–house legal team streamlines your work by driving down oversight cost, removes unnecessary workflows, simplifies contracts, NDAs, and other documents.
  • The in-house legal team becomes more customer-driven instead of process-driven.
  • It reduces outside expenditure through convergence process.

Choosing to outsource all legal work to a law firm: things to consider

  • One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing your legal process to a law firm is substantial cost savings. Appointing an in-house legal team can be much more expensive because not only do you have to pay them annual salaries but also give them employment benefits such as health.
  • These cost reductions can create added capital for your company’s re-investment in the most strategic parts of the business.
  • Outsourcing allows organizations to leverage best practices adopted by far more experienced counsel.
  • Versatile outsourcing law firms can easily find a service provider for back-end support, research, marketing, customer support for any business activity.

Important facts before outsourcing to law firms:

The important things to be considered before legal outsourcing includes the nature and scope of the process to be outsourced, former outsourcing experience, and concerns about information confidentiality, security, risk tolerance and budgetary constraints.

There might be possibility of differences in the interest of appointing both the legal authorities, in-house or outsourced; both have their own advantages and risks.

Nevertheless, a careful valuation is needed to identify and assess the relative pros and cons for a particular legal strategy your company requires.