If you’re currently considering whether to hire an in-house legal counsel, the more relevant question to ask yourself is what is the difference between an in-house attorney and a traditional legal services provider. Understanding of the advantages and disadvantages between the two roles will likely guide you to the correct decision as to which one would work best for your requirements.

There are many advantages to using an in-house attorney rather than an external legal services provider, such as:

1. Potentially lower cost 

While outsourcing certain areas of your business can be more cost effective, an in-house attorney can actually help to save your business money. This is due to the fact that traditional lawyers will charge you usually based on time.

2. Business and legal advice

In-house attorney usually have a background in legal in business areas, which means they can provide legal advice that has been conceived with business knowledge in mind. Similar to an in-house legal counsel, outsourcing some or all of your legal service requirements can be beneficial to your business depending on the size and structure of your legal team.

Here are a few advantages to using external legal services.

1. Access to highly-specialized experts 

If your business has a very specific issue that requires urgent or immediate attention and your in-house legal resources are unable to handle the issue, working with external legal services can be very beneficial.

2. Less commitment

In some cases, a business will require legal services on unique projects for a designated period. Additionally, these projects may not require the full time attention of a lawyer. As such, it can be more beneficial to a business to outsource certain projects to a specialized legal service.

3. Varied experience 

Given the nature of their business on external legal services provider, is able to dispense legal advice based on experiences across a wide range of industries. In this way, your business will have access not only to a unique perspective, whereby an out-of-the-box idea might be the best solution for your case.