April 26, 2023

 Natalie Limerick

flexible resources best practices flexible resourcing law firm Flexible legal staffing

No law firm can afford to relinquish a strategic edge. Yet, some firms have yet to maximise the competitive advantages of their alumni relationships. Strong relationships with lawyers who have previously worked at your firm provide multiple benefits, including as a source of new clients, strong candidates for positions at your firm, and pre-vetted interim legal professionals.

There are two crucial components of a successful alumni program: alumni involvement and maximising value. Even firms with dedicated teams to manage an alumni program have room for improvement in each of these areas. Meanwhile, firms without an alumni program may not know where to begin with either. Based on my experience working with numerous firms, let’s consider each component in turn.

Getting Alumni Involved

The active participation of firm alumni is sine qua non of your alumni program delivering strategic value. Here are five key points for fostering alumni involvement:

• Define and follow a process. Any time a lawyer decides to leave your firm, you should have a consistent procedure to onboard them to the alumni program. Tell them about alumni program activities and events and, even more importantly, ask them about their interests and the types of events that are of potential interest. This information will help you target your subsequent outreach to them.
• Promote your alumni program among firm lawyers. A critical part of a strong alumni program is awareness among current firm lawyers of its activities and benefits. When onboarding lawyers to your firm, educate them about the program – what it does and how it benefits the firm and alumni alike. You should also regularly update firm lawyers about the program’s activities and promote upcoming alumni events. Showcasing ‘wins’ – new business and new hires attributable to the program – helps demonstrate the value of the program and sustain interest in it.
• Provide alumni with a compelling in-person experience and a supportive network. Participation in network events should be enjoyable rather than a chore. Sponsor informal get-togethers and fun outings. Introduce new entrants to the program to alumni who departed the firm before that new alumnus or alumna arrived. Remember: the better the experience alumni have, the more valuable the program becomes.
• Communicate in the right way and the right places. You should communicate with alumni through a variety of platforms and channels, including newsletters updating alumni about recent and upcoming program activities, webinars on legal topics and career development, alumni-only social network groups, and periodic emails as well as social media posts of firm news, client job vacancies, pro-bono opportunities, alumni professional achievements (promotions, honors, litigation wins, new deals, etc.), and personal news (e.g., nuptials, the birth of a child, recent travel adventures, etc.). Establish and maintain a regular cadence of communication with fresh and engaging content.
• Provide options for in-person participation. In addition to all-alumni events, sponsor ones tailored to subsets of the community: young lawyers, partners, lawyers working in-house, etc. You may even want to have events centred on specific topics and activities, for example, community service projects, pro bono clinics, author talks and interviews (including ones on topics beyond law issues and career development), and social gathering and outings (sporting events, concerts, theatre, recreational activities, etc.).

Deriving Value

In addition to alumni engagement, obtaining the maximum value from an alumni program requires administrative activity. Rather than reinvent the wheel, consider working with a dedicated flexible staffing company that has established systems for tracking, supporting, and staffing legal talent. They can help with three activities that are critical to getting the most value possible out of your alumni:

• Up-to-date contact and career information. Not everyone in your alumni program is going to diligently update you as they change jobs and get new work email addresses. Firms with a CRM system and appropriate procedures can leverage these to track alumni. Otherwise, it often makes sense to enlist a flex staffing firm already proficient in keeping current on lawyers’ career moves and contact information.
• Ongoing professional support. Perhaps the single most important determinant of alumni involvement in an alumni program is whether it helps their career. Providing professional support services – assistance with writing a CV, job interview prep, market intelligence – will always be critical. However, doing so may be beyond the capability of your firm. Again, a flex staffing company can assist, as these are core activities for them.
• Leveraging alumni knowledge, expertise, and availability. Because your alumni possess extensive knowledge about firm clients and matters, they can immediately add business value, whether by rejoining the firm as a full-time employee or an interim hire or through a secondment. Depending on the situation, you may want to handle the administrative and logistical aspects of reengaging an alumnus or alumna; other times, it is easier to have an interim staffing company do it.

As far as having a flex staffing firm assist with your alumni program, there are two more points to remember. First, as portfolio career paradigm gains popularity, a flex firm provides additional value as increasing numbers of your alumni explore this emerging career path. Partnering with an interim staffing company enables you to solidify your relationships with those alumni.

Second, independent of your alumni program, flex talent enables you to relieve your full-time employees during extreme peaks in demand, reducing the risk of attrition and expanding your firm’s ability to service existing and new clients. (For further discussion of the benefits of flex staffing, see my recent post, ’How ‘Flex Lawyering’ Benefits Both Practitioners and Law Organisations’.)

Your alumni can be your loudest and most powerful promoters – or detractors – and possess tremendous power to affect your firm’s brand in the marketplace and among both current employees and potential hires. Your relationship with your alumni is a strategic differentiator and, as such, deserves the resources and attention necessary to get the most value possible from your former colleagues.