“We attract the highest level attorney who’s willing or eager to work on substantive matters on a contract basis, as well as the higher level attorney who wishes to do eDiscovery review assignments”
21 February 2024 (Brussels, BE) – When I started The Posse List in 2002, the first two people I met were Elaine P. Dine (founder of the eponymous staffing agency which was one of the first to place temporary attorneys, paralegals and compliance professionals), and the agency’s president, Craig Brown. I actually worked several temporary assignments for Elaine P. Dine in the area of securities law.
Note to readers: The Posse List was started in 2002. It posts projects and positions across the entire legal employment field. It is part of The Project Counsel Group. The Project Counsel Group now has over 145,000+ members world-wide. That’s across all of our industry job listservs: advertising, artificial intelligence, cyber security, information technology/legal technology/legal services, journalism, media, and the telecommunications industry. You can read more about The Posse List by clicking here.
Craig moved on to co-found B3 Legal, which was acquired by OmniVere, and he became President of OmniVere Legal Services, the staffing and managed document review division of OmniVere.
B3 Legal (and then OmniVere) became the first staffing agency clients of The Posse List, and Craig and I would continue that relationship through to the present day with Bridgeline Solutions and its parent, Lateral Link.
But Craig added one additional element to The Posse List employment mix. Besides the need for e-discovery attorneys to plow through gigabytes and terabytes of documents, there was a growing need for very high-end attorneys (often called “secondees”) to do high level work. So not necessarily anything related to discovery, but more helping out on a merger and acquisition project, or a finance project, or writing an appellate brief, or perhaps a real estate international deal. Doing substantive work on an “as needed” basis.
Because law firms and in-house corporate legal departments had a growing need for such “contract” attorneys, and due to the vagaries of the legal industry permanent hiring markets there was a growing pool of Big Law former associates, and Federal judicial clerks, former United States assistant attorneys, etc. Very few companies have the ability to attract these high level attorneys willing or eager to work on a contract basis, but Bridgeline Solutions and Lateral Link carved out a niche beyond the the document review side.
Note: The Posse List roster of high-level attorneys has grown because many of these attorneys have told us the flexibility offers them a work-life balance. One lawyer wrote to us and said she was working for a law firm until 9pm or 10pm, five-to-six days a week, and now that she had children she wanted some semblance of her life back. Many of these assignments top out at 30 hours a week, but still provide a phenomenal wage and clients are equally flexible because these candidates exceed their requirements. So it works for all sides.
And so The Posse List grew with it, these higher level positions now constituting 21% of our job listings.
My media team had a chance to catch-up with Craig at LEGALWEEK 2024 and in the video interview below Craig talks about:
– how he got a very early start in the (then) very new market for contract attorneys
– the areas in which Bridgeline Solutions has built specialties
– how Bridgeline Solutions has attracted higher-level contract attorneys
– how Bridgeline Solutions has differentiated itself in the legal staffing market
– what drives law firms and corporate legal departments to seek out Bridgeline Solutions, or any vendor in this market
– the challenges Craig sees for the industry in 2024 and beyond
Here is the interview, produced by my videographer Marco Vallini: