Why the Use of Flexible Legal Talent Has Become a Strategic Imperative
by Greg Mazares, Sr., CEO of Purpose Legal and Hire Counsel
Legal organizations are confronting a convergence of forces unlike anything the profession has experienced in modern history.
For decades, law firms, corporate legal departments, and other legal services providers optimized around one assumption: demand would be relatively predictable, permanent staffing would satisfy most needs, and temporary legal talent would be reserved for unusual spikes in workload.
That operating model is becoming obsolete.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the annual volume of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally is projected to grow from approximately 129 zettabytes in 2023 to nearly 394 zettabytes by 2028, a more than threefold increase in just five years.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping legal workflows. Economic uncertainty continues to pressure budgets. At the same time, clients expect faster service, lower costs, and greater transparency.
The deployment of flexible legal talent is no longer simply a staffing alternative. It has become a strategic imperative.
Having spent nearly four decades building companies in legal services and technology, I believe such changes represent structural (and not cyclical) shifts that will reshape the profession for years to come.
Five powerful forces are driving this transformation.
These forces are not independent trends. They reinforce one another:
- More data drives AI adoption.
- AI changes workforce economics.
- Economic uncertainty increases pressure for flexibility.
- Regulatory complexity increases demand.
- Rising client expectations accelerate all of the above.
Force #1: Financial Agility Has Become a Competitive Requirement
Today’s CEOs and CFOs are increasingly reluctant to convert temporary demand into permanent cost.
Although inflation has moderated from its recent highs, organizations are preserving cash, scrutinizing hiring decisions, and favoring operating models that convert fixed costs into variable costs.
The 2025 Association of Corporate Counsel Chief Legal Officers Survey found that chief legal officers continue to identify cost control, resource constraints, and increasing workloads among their most significant operational challenges. At the same time, legal leaders are assuming broader responsibilities for enterprise risk management and strategic business decisions.
Consider these converging and conflicting trends:
- Law firm hourly billing rates increased an average of 7.4% last year
- The billing rate increase was even greater at 8.3% for prominent AmLaw 100 firms
- Only 36% of GCs expect spending on outside counsel to increase
- Corporate legal departments demand greater discipline in budgeting and cost containment
Legal services demand remains healthy, but the cost of maintaining permanent workforce capacity has never been greater.
This creates a difficult equation in which something has to give. Legal risk continues to increase while budgets remain constrained.
Rather than expanding permanent legal headcount for work that may be temporary, many organizations are seeking operating models that convert fixed costs into variable costs without sacrificing quality or responsiveness.
Flexible staffing strategies provide precisely that capability. Organizations can rapidly increase or decrease experienced legal talent as business conditions change while they preserve cash and maintain financial discipline.
Force #2: Data Has Become the New Driver of Legal Demand
Every lawsuit, investigation, regulatory inquiry, and internal review is fundamentally a data challenge.
The average enterprise now generates enormous volumes of electronically stored information across email, cloud applications, collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, mobile devices, text messages, audio, video, and structured business systems. Every new collaboration platform, SaaS application, AI assistant, mobile device, and cloud repository expands an organization’s legal risk profile.
Industry forecasts from the International Data Corporation (IDC) continue to project extraordinary growth in the volume of digital information created worldwide, with global data expanding at a pace that far exceeds organizations’ ability to manually manage it.
For attorneys and legal operations professionals, more enterprise data represents a significant legal risk.
The question is no longer whether legal matters will involve large volumes of complex data.
The question is whether organizations have the human expertise and scalability to manage that data efficiently and defensibly.
Flexible legal professionals with expertise in eDiscovery, investigations, information governance, and AI-assisted review provide an important part of that answer.
Force #3: AI Is Increasing (Not Decreasing) the Value of Experienced Lawyers
Generative AI is transforming legal workflows at remarkable speed.
A growing number of leading corporate legal departments and law firms have become early adopters of AI to accelerate document review, summarize evidence, identify relevant information, draft work product, manage contracts, and improve overall operating cost and efficiency. But it is not about technology alone. They can combine the use of AI with the fractional use of external experts in AI-powered document review, data science, compliance and other disciplines to give them the specialized resources they need when they need them.
Research from the Thomson Reuters Institute’s Future of Professionals studies and multiple Association of Corporate Counsel surveys indicate that AI adoption across the legal profession continues to accelerate, with organizations expecting measurable productivity gains while maintaining high standards of accuracy and defensibility.
- 52% of corporate legal professionals already use GenAI
- 54% expect outside counsel to use AI
- 68% don’t know whether their outside firms are actually using AI
Corporate legal departments are embracing AI. They expect their outside law firms to embrace AI. Yet, they have very little visibility into if and how AI is actually being used.
Corporate clients increasingly expect AI-enabled legal services—but they also expect transparency, defensibility, and experienced legal judgment.
Yet several facts remain unchanged.
- Courts do not hold AI accountable.
- Clients do not retain AI.
- Regulators do not question AI.
- They hold attorneys, law firms, and corporations accountable.
Privilege determinations, responsiveness decisions, legal strategy, risk assessment, regulatory interpretation, and ethical obligations will always require experienced legal judgment.
What organizations increasingly need is not simply more lawyers or more AI.
They need a new operating capability. I call it Engineered Intelligence.
This new methodology combines artificial intelligence, experienced legal professionals, and disciplined operational processes to produce legal outcomes that are faster, more scalable, and more defensible than any one component could achieve alone.
The future of legal services is not artificial intelligence alone. It’s the use of powerful technology (i.e. artificial intelligence) guided by experienced legal and technology professionals (i.e. human intelligence) when the need arises and at the level of scale required for each matter.
Force #4: Geopolitical and Regulatory Complexity Is Driving Unpredictable Demand
The past several years have demonstrated how quickly the legal landscape can change.
We have experienced a global pandemic; international conflicts; trade and tariff disputes; rapidly evolving privacy laws; additional cybersecurity regulations; artificial intelligence governance; environmental, social, and other regulatory requirements; economic sanctions; and cross-border investigations among others.
Each development has the potential to create significant new legal work with little advance notice.
- 64% expect AI to reduce outside counsel reliance
- 50% expect AI to reduce outside counsel costs
- 43% of CLOs nevertheless expect to send more work to outside counsel.
You read that right; it is not a contradiction.
Clients are not trying to eliminate outside counsel.
They’re not trying to buy fewer legal services. They’re trying to buy legal capacity more intelligently.
That is exactly where flexible legal staffing fits in.
The 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey reports that regulatory complexity remains one of the fastest-growing concerns among corporate legal leaders, contributing directly to increased reliance on external expert legal resources.
Legal organizations therefore face a unique challenge.
Demand is increasing—but it is becoming far less predictable.
Maintaining permanent staffing levels sufficient to address every possible surge is financially impractical.
Having access to experienced legal talent that can be deployed rapidly in small or large numbers for a specific period of time is becoming a true strategic imperative.
Force #5: Clients Expect More Value Than Ever Before
Corporate clients are asking more of their legal providers than simply providing excellent legal advice and counsel.
They expect:
- Faster turnaround
- Greater efficiency
- Technology-enabled delivery
- Predictable pricing and budget control
- Data-driven reporting
- Demonstrable value
At the same time, law firms continue to invest heavily in technology, cybersecurity, AI platforms, knowledge management, and attorney recruitment among other areas.
Industry analyses from the Thomson Reuters Institute consistently show that clients increasingly reward firms that combine high-quality legal expertise with operational excellence and efficient delivery models.
Flexible legal staffing initiatives support those expectations.
Law firms can scale rapidly without permanently increasing overhead.
Corporate legal departments gain access to specialized expertise exactly when they need it.
They can improve responsiveness while preserving financial flexibility.
A New Legal Operating Model
No single force is transforming the legal profession by itself. The significance of the five forces lies in how they reinforce one another. More data accelerates AI adoption. AI changes workforce economics. Economic uncertainty increases pressure for financial flexibility. Regulatory complexity increases legal demand. Rising client expectations amplify all of these trends simultaneously. Together, they are creating a new legal operating environment.
Taken together, these five forces point toward a common conclusion.
The legal profession is moving away from workforce models built around fixed headcount and cost structures and toward operating models built around scalable expertise.
To be clear, this does not mean replacing permanent attorneys.
It means augmenting them with experienced legal and technology professionals who can be deployed quickly, integrated seamlessly, and leveraged alongside advanced legal technology, such as artificial intelligence, whenever demand requires.
Organizations that embrace this approach become more resilient; respond faster; control costs more effectively; and adopt new technologies and methodologies with greater confidence.
Most importantly, they build the organizational agility necessary to deliver consistently high-quality legal services, regardless of economic uncertainty, technological disruption, or fluctuations in legal demand.
Looking Ahead
History rarely announces when an operating model has become obsolete. Organizations usually recognize it only after the market has already moved on. The convergence of economic uncertainty, accelerating AI adoption, exploding enterprise data, geopolitical instability, and rising client expectations suggests that the legal profession has reached precisely such a moment.
The question is no longer whether legal organizations should become more agile. The question is whether they will adapt before their competitors do.
Flexible legal staffing is not simply a solution for periodic high workloads.
It is becoming an essential component of a modern legal operating strategy.
The law firms and corporate legal departments that will prosper and lead in the next decade are unlikely to be those with the largest permanent workforces.
They will be those that combine outstanding legal talent, intelligent technology, and operational agility to deliver exceptional outcomes, no matter what challenges emerge next.
The five forces described here explain why legal staffing models are changing.
They do not explain why some organizations will outperform others.
The organizations that dominate will be those that can dynamically integrate experienced legal professionals, advanced technology, and disciplined operational processes through Engineered Intelligence.
That is the next evolution of legal services and the subject of my upcoming article.
Coming Next
Part 2: The Sixth Force – Engineered Intelligence
Why AI alone isn’t enough and why the organizations that combine technology, legal expertise, and disciplined processes will outperform those that don’t.
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About the Author
Greg Mazares, Sr. is the CEO of Purpose Legal and Hire Counsel. He is a veteran senior executive in the legal services and legal technology industry with more than three decades of experience helping law firms and corporate legal departments navigate complex litigation, investigations, regulatory matters, and enterprise data challenges. Throughout his career, he has built, and led innovative companies focused on eDiscovery, managed review, flexible legal staffing, data forensics, information governance, and AI-enabled legal solutions. A frequent writer and speaker on the intersection of artificial intelligence, enterprise data, and the evolving legal profession, he advocates for helping organizations achieve perpetual data readiness to improve decision-making, reduce risk, and unlock the full value of artificial intelligence.
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