Outsourcing without losing control: Smart delegation for legal teams

This summer, the In-House With You team at HCR Law is ‘walking on legal sunshine’ with Hot Tips for Cool Counsel, a seven-part article series created especially for in-house lawyers. Whether you’re planning ahead or tackling new challenges, these summer legal essentials offer a seasonal refresh with practical tips and insights, to help you stay sharp, compliant, and confident, whatever the summer brings.

In this issue, Gurinder Hayer, Joint Head of In-House Lawyer Services and Head of HCR Flex, looks at how do you outsource legal work whilst maintaining quality and control.

In-house legal teams are often cautious about outsourcing work to external law firms. Internal matters are easily monitored, but engaging external counsel introduces variability in both process and output.

A further concern is alignment with the business. External firms may lack a deep understanding of the company’s operations, culture and risk appetite. This can result in legal advice that is overly conservative, impractical, or disconnected from the business commercial objectives.

Finally, inconsistencies in legal standards, ranging from expertise and attention to detail to writing style can create friction. These differences not only risk confusing business stakeholders but may also reflect poorly on the in-house function, which is ultimately accountable for the legal output.

So how do you outsource legal work whilst maintaining quality and control?

There are some key practical frameworks that in-house counsel can use to offload legal work effectively while keeping quality and risk in check.

1. Matter “triage and track”

Classify legal work under specific risk and complexity categories to determine outsourcing needs. Of course, these examples are general but can be tailored depending on the business and type of instructions received.

• Low-Risk- BAU (Business as Usual), Internal: supplier contracts, framework agreements etc
• Medium-Risk, External: TUPE queries, compliance advice (e.g., Bribery Act)
• High-Risk, Strategic: ICO or CMA investigation, high-value commercial litigation.

2. Establish a quality and business essentials framework

To maintain consistency, many in-house teams we work with have established a ‘quality and business essentials’ framework which is adopted when engaging external law firms. This ensures that when firms are being instructed, they are of a sufficient technical ability to undertake the work whilst having an awareness of the key points/risk areas for the business. Key components of the framework could include:

• Firm selection and onboarding: Engage with firms that align with your internal standards and culture

• Matter onboarding brief: Create a standardised brief at the outset of each matter to guide external counsel. This should cover:
  • Outlining who the key internal stakeholders and decision-makers are
  • Commercial drivers behind the matter and strategic priorities
  • Specific risk tolerances (e.g., reputational risk, consumer confidence)
  • Setting expectations around the provision of legal advice which is both commercial and pragmatic.
• Defined roles and responsibilities: what you expect from the advice and to what extent in-house team is supporting (if at all)

• Monitoring and mid-point review: Schedule formal reviews mid-way through significant matters to reassess scope, risks, and alignment with business goals. Adjust strategy and resources if needed.

This framework helps ensure external legal services are delivered to a consistent standard, support compliance, and are aligned with your organisation’s risk appetite and commercial objectives.

3. Cost and fee control framework for legal spend

Ultimately, costs still appear to be the main ‘barrier’ for instructing externals. As such maintaining discipline over legal spend requires a structured approach to both budgeting and billing. There are already several well-established pricing tools and practices that in-house teams can leverage to retain cost control without compromising on quality.

Fee arrangement types:

• Fixed fees
• Capped fees
• Retainers for ongoing advisory advice (for example provision of legal support at [x] rate for [x hours per week])
• Day rates fixed.

Real-time spend tracking and billing guidelines:

• Implement internal billing guidelines, including restrictions on scope creeping or advance billing
• Conduct regular reviews
• Enforce a strict no uplift without written pre-approval
• Transparent rates to avoid hidden fees.

We recognise the day-to-day challenges faced by in-house legal teams in managing high volumes of legal work, where time pressures, limited resources, and budget constraints remain constant and critical considerations.

This has driven the rise in legal outsourcing, which has grown exponentially in recent years, as in-house legal departments contend with these challenges.

That’s why we created HCR Flex – a legal counsel and in-house lawyer secondment service that offers both temporary interim and fixed-term staffing solutions to support legal departments. Working either on-site at your offices or remotely, our expert lawyers seamlessly integrate with in-house teams, offering commercial advice, while also bringing access to the wider specialisms within our firm.

HCR Flex revolutionises the traditional legal billing model, by offering bespoke flexible legal resource solutions for organisations that require additional legal resource, while maintaining control over costs.

Designed to help with managing spikes in workload and interim needs, HCR Flex offers additional capacity via short-term temporary or longer fixed term secondments, without the need for a permanent increase in headcount. It can serve as a valuable complement or supplement to your in-house counsel, delivering specialised legal expertise precisely when and where it’s needed, with the added benefit of price certainty and transparency.

To read more in the ‘Hot Tips for Cool Counsel’ series click here.