Attorney FAQ

The first step is a phone call with one of our recruitment managers to discuss your expertise and career goals. If your experience is a good match for our clients, we will ask you to complete a short skills exercise, which helps us assess your substantive knowledge and negotiating style. Next, you will meet the members of the internal FLEX team so we can all learn more about your practice and answer any remaining questions you may have. We can then begin reaching out about new suitable engagements as they arise.

Our clients are technology and life sciences companies of all sizes, and we focus on recruiting attorneys with commercial, corporate, privacy/product, employment, and/or IP transactional expertise, both in-house and from large law firms.

No. If you are looking for flexible work arrangements or want to explore a new direction, contact us. Joining our roster simply gives you the opportunity to hear about potential engagements that may be of interest to you. When the right engagement comes along, we will make sure the FLEX client is aware of any transition time you need so that you can give notice to your current employer once the FLEX client has made the decision to move forward.

No. While FLEX is a service offering of Fenwick & West, we recruit attorneys specifically for FLEX and our attorney roster is separate from the partners and associates of Fenwick.

Similar to traditional interim legal staffing agencies, FLEX gives attorneys access to flexible in-house opportunities. But unlike those agencies, FLEX is the only service connected to an Am Law 100 firm.

This benefits you in several ways:

• Because Fenwick & West has a great roster of exciting, fast-growing companies, FLEX tends to have more opportunities to work with smaller, early-stage clients.
• The internal FLEX team managers are all attorneys, so we are better equipped to understand your legal skills and appropriately match you with clients than the typical staffing agency “sales” person or recruiter.
• You get the benefit of the association with Fenwick’s quality brand.

With client consent, you will be able to reach out to Fenwick to get additional support or deeper expertise beyond your own skills and expertise.

When a client contacts the internal FLEX team about an upcoming need, we first identify all the FLEX attorneys that are a good fit for the role and reach out to gauge interest and availability. It is always your decision as to whether you would like us to submit your candidacy for a role, and we will never do so without speaking with you first.

Once we have identified candidates, we will send over FLEX attorney bios to the client. The client will choose which FLEX attorneys they would like to interview and then decide which attorney to bring on for the engagement. The internal FLEX team will assist with scheduling, onboarding, and anything else you or the client need along the way.

The client commits upfront to an amount of time (the “engagement period”) to ensure the availability of their FLEX attorney. When the client’s workflow is fairly predictable, the engagement will be either part-time or full-time, with a set number of hours per week. For more flexibility, a client can purchase a number of hours to use over the course of a 13-week quarter and call upon their FLEX attorney as needed, with no set weekly schedule (a “Quarterly”).

You will know the commitment level at the start of the engagement period to allow for maximum flexibility and predictability. If you are only available for part-time/Quarterly engagements, that is absolutely fine.

The internal FLEX team strives to match an attorney’s bandwidth with a client’s needs, and our goal is to provide you with as many opportunities as possible. Many FLEX attorneys secure engagements soon upon joining our roster and remain engaged indefinitely. Other FLEX attorneys may be on our roster for a while before we find a suitable engagement and may have significant breaks between engagements.

Yes, and this is quite common. You can work on several part-time or Quarterly FLEX engagements at the same time.

We also have no blanket restriction on any of our attorneys simultaneously working with their own clients or working on engagements through traditional placement agencies while on a FLEX engagement.

Your compensation is set as an annual base salary upon you joining our roster. It is specific to you and does not vary based on the engagement you may be working on. Once you are on an engagement, you are then paid depending on how much you are working. If you were working a full-time schedule (40 hours/week) for a full year, you would receive your full salary. If you are working less than that, you will receive a pro rata portion of your annualized salary as an hourly pay rate. We will always be transparent about your pay rate and give you full predictability on what to expect in this regard

Yes! We provide a full suite of benefits:

• You will be automatically covered by our malpractice insurance while on engagement.
• You will be able to access continuing legal education seminars through PLI and Fenwick’s internal training programs.
• You will accrue paid time off and be eligible for paid holidays.
• We will cover your state bar membership dues if you work a minimum number of hours over a calendar year.
• You can immediately participate in our 401(K) plan.
• We have medical, dental, and vision insurance group plans that you can participate in depending on your level of engagement.

While we hate to lose our lawyers, we love successful engagements. If you and the FLEX client eventually want a direct employment relationship, we want to help. We do charge the client a conversion fee, which they are aware of before the engagement begins.

If a client wants to hire you but you do not want to accept, we will work out a plan together, manage the client relationship, and find other FLEX opportunities for you.

Yes, but it is a far simpler process than traditional law firm billing.

At the end of each week, you log in to our portal and enter the total number of hours or days you worked that week. We do not ask our attorneys to keep narrative notes or bill by matter/task.

Historically, the closer your schedule is to full-time with one client, the more likely the engagement would be on site or have some on-site component to it. For Quarterly or small part-time engagements, you would generally work remotely and come on site if necessary, for pre-arranged meetings.