Managed legal services — a different type of career in law?

Law firm career ladders can be steep, heady and hugely rewarding. However, the trainee-to-partner journey is not for everyone. Fortunately for lawyers at all stages of their career, other options are available.

The path from law firms to in-house legal teams is well-travelled and well-liked, but others are looking for a middle ground. One that allows them to be part of a large, diverse legal team, with access to innovative technology, while maintaining close client relationships and a healthy work-life balance.

This middle ground is increasingly occupied by managed legal services. These managed service models give lawyers the opportunity to work in a similar way to in-house lawyers – working closely with one or perhaps a small handful of clients – but with the benefits of a ‘big law’ legal operation.

In Scotland, where the concentration of international law firms is smaller than it is in England – with most firms based wholly or partly in London – such career paths are proving especially attractive for lawyers who want to remain in the country without limiting their career options.

Home talent

The emergence of new kinds of legal careers is set against a backdrop of a growing supply of Scottish legal talent; last year saw a record number of solicitors admitted in the country, with the Law Society of Scotland presenting certificates of enrolment to 127 new solicitors in a single day in November 2024.

Clients are also persuaded by the advantages of these alternative models. Organisations using managed legal services include FTSE 100 retailers, global e-commerce companies, banks and major facilities managers, for everything from employment to real estate and corporate matters.

While managed legal services may have started out as cost-effective alternatives to private practice for low-value, high-volume legal work generated by big companies, the sector has matured considerably.

Client confidence in these models has progressed to a point where highly complex, challenging projects are now regularly routed through managed services, such is the level of trust in these alternative providers.

New ways of working

One reason for the growing perception of managed legal services’ capacity to add value is that these models are typically built by professionals from numerous disciplines, who can spot opportunities to streamline services in ways lawyers working alone may not notice.

Workflow management systems in particular have been game-changers for the legal industry and are among the key differentiators between private practice and managed legal services.

Overseen by experienced lawyers and operations professionals, these workflow systems capture data in a way that allows users to spot trends in a business, identify pinch points and understand where efficiencies can be made – typically in low-complexity and/or high-volume matters that absorb disproportionate amounts of legal time.

This data also helps lawyers understand what matters clients need to serve themselves on and provide relevant precedents and training, so that clients are not always reliant on outside legal support for routine issues.

Making clients more self-sufficient on day-to-day matters gives them capacity to issue more complicated and often higher value instructions for managed legal service lawyers, without the pressure on these lawyers to upsell their services to win these types of work.

Rewarding relationships

While every law firm forges close relationships with its clients, often deep in the trenches of a major deal or dispute, these relationships may pause abruptly or even end entirely once a matter is concluded.

Managed legal services are generally longer-term engagements, with deeper levels of integration between the external lawyers and in-house teams, meaning lawyers help implement the advice they give, rather than just handing it over.

Managed legal services have largely banished lengthy advice notes in favour of giving clients brief, actionable recommendations and ongoing support.

This approach means that as well as being technically astute, managed service lawyers also need to be demonstrably commercially minded, pragmatic and solutions-focused.

The responsiveness of managed service models to fluctuations in clients’ demands also favours agile-minded lawyers who can adapt to change – something that is often feared in law firms, where change frequently means painfully dismantling existing approaches and forcing through new ways of working.

And the open, transparent lines of communication between lawyer and client that managed service models offer is typically a refreshing change for junior lawyers in particular, who as law firm associates may have had little or no direct contact with clients.

Innovators welcome

Managed legal services tend to run on specially built technology systems, designed to help lawyers manage the needs of large organisations accurately and efficiently, with the flexibility to incorporate ongoing process improvements using the client’s data.

They also give lawyers the time and opportunities to participate in innovation in a way that can be harder to access in law firms, where technology products are selected and rolled out at a distant corporate level.

This direct participation may be helping to train an algorithm, building a software solution or designing a workflow process, according to the needs of a particular client.

For lawyers who loathe the billable hour, the fixed-fee arrangements and results-based objectives that underpin managed legal services give lawyers far greater independence in terms of how they approach their time.

Managed legal services are also generally operated on a largely remote basis, giving lawyers far greater flexibility and choice over where and when they work. For large law firms, these models allow them to access deep pools of legal talent such as the Scottish legal market, which might otherwise be out of reach for desk-based roles in big English cities.

The best providers cultivate a strong team ethos and culture among remote workers, ensuring their teams are happy and motivated to perform at their best.

There are also ample collaboration opportunities with private practice, with law firms still playing an important role in meeting particular client needs. 

Written by Thembe McInnes, Group Managing Lawyer, and Agne Zasinaite, Senior Lawyer, Dentons Helix