Using a freelance lawyer is a good business decision. They immediately create short-term profit potential, are paid only for work completed, and do not increase overhead or supply expense. When these business benefits related to outsourcing, are translated to law practice benefits mean:
Paid only for work completed: Capacity Without Overhead
You will be able to take more cases or larger cases without the effort and certain expense of locating, interviewing, training, housing and paying another lawyer. The benefit appears particularly appealing in uncertain and troubled current state of the economy.
You will also be able to cultivate your current clients with a more comprehensive approach to practice enabled by access to attorneys of varied skills.
Short-Term Profit Potential: Revenue Without Investment
The retaining attorney-contract relationship and internal law office billing have the same dynamics governed by the same rules. Thus increased skill generates higher fees and profits. Law firms have to invest and wait to reap those profits. But when you retain a remote freelance lawyer you reap profits in direct and predictable proportion to your investment over a dramatically shorter time period. If you collected a retainer from your client, you reap those profits instantly, every time, and without wasting a penny.
Implications
With the money you saved on office overhead, the profits you made without investment and comforted by the knowledge that your firm has the capacity to handle all the work you can find, you can go out and find it. Alternatively, you could just rest.
These benefits combined, compounded, and followed to the ultimate conclusion seem to end with the conclusion that a solo practice could generate the same revenue and dramatically higher profits than the largest law firm in the world.