Most in-house legal teams are still operating on human capital models designed for a different era - and which no longer represent the right basis upon which to manage expensive legal team members / human capital.

Fixed headcount, slow hiring cycles, secondments, and episodic law firm support were never built to cope with volatile demand, continuous regulatory change, or the expectation that legal will move at business speed. 

The result is predictable: overloaded teams, brittle capacity, and leadership forced into reactive, sub-optimal resourcing decisions.

Agile Resourcing exists to fix this structural problem. It gives legal leaders a way to engineer performance, not manage people shortages. 

Rather than relying on static headcount or stop-gap secondments, agile resourcing provides a controlled, scalable, and knowledge-retentive capacity layer that flexes with demand, preserves continuity, and protects the core team. 

It is a deliberate response to the reality that modern legal workloads are uneven, fragmented, and increasingly time-critical.

Crucially, this is not a premium solution. When properly designed, agile resourcing is cost-comparable—often cheaper—than permanent headcount, once fully-loaded employment costs, utilisation risk, and law firm reversion are taken into account. 

More importantly, it avoids the hidden costs that traditional models impose on legal teams: burnout, knowledge loss, repeated onboarding, and leadership distraction.

Agile Resourcing is a core component of that system—giving General Counsel and legal leaders the ability to respond to demand intelligently, protect their teams, and run legal as a disciplined, modern operation rather than a perpetual crisis function.

On the Human Capital Line, this station is a critical enabler of a robust and dynamic Human Capital solution.  Agile resourcing plays a major role in helping in-house leaders deliver the performance engineered approach modern legal teams need to achieve performance at industrial scale. 

The scope of Agile Resourcing typically includes:

◼️ Demand Forecasting & Activation Protocols: Analysing workload patterns and volatility to identify when and where additional capacity is required, supported by clear “press-go” triggers that allow the team to mobilise agile resources without delay or debate.

◼️ Pre-Approved Flexible Talent Pools: Standing access to vetted, contract-ready legal professionals who can be deployed quickly without recruitment, procurement, or onboarding drag.

◼️ Mobilisation Speed: Capability to stand up additional capacity at short notice, enabling rapid response to transactions, investigations, regulatory change, or internal disruption.

◼️ Specialist Surge Capability: On-demand access to niche expertise for complex or unfamiliar work without the cost, inertia, or utilisation risk of permanent headcount.

◼️ Project-Based Capacity Scaling: Temporary resourcing to support defined transactions, disputes, remediation programs, or regulatory events with clear scope and exit points.

◼️ Managed Workflow Coverage: Allocation of repeatable, process-driven legal work to managed service models under clearly defined delivery scopes and service expectations.

◼️ Technology-Leveraged Capacity: Use of automation, AI, and workflow tools to suppress avoidable demand and reduce manual effort before additional human capacity is introduced.

◼️ Cost & Value Governance: Mechanisms to track utilisation, comparative cost, and value delivered by agile resources versus internal and traditional external models.

◼️ Active Knowledge Accretion: Client, matter, and process knowledge is deliberately accumulated through delivery so capability compounds over time. Knowledge build-up is embedded in the service—not treated as a chargeable activity.

◼️ Non-Chargeable Knowledge Continuity: Client familiarity and operating context persist across personnel changes without repeated onboarding or re-learning costs being passed back to the client.

◼️ Knowledge Diagnostics: Structured diagnostics evidencing what knowledge has been captured, retained, and reused across engagements—demonstrating cumulative value rather than reset cycles.

◼️ Transformation Intelligence Overlay: The provider analyses work patterns and provides practical insights on how demand can be reduced, simplified, automated, or re-routed over time.

◼️ Delivery Optimisation Recommendations: Ongoing recommendations on how similar work can be handled more efficiently through different resource mixes, process redesign, or technology leverage.

◼️ Client Asset Familiarity: Agile resources operate fluently within the client’s approved systems, templates, playbooks, and ways of working to ensure seamless and leveraged delivery.

◼️ Controlled Delivery Assets: The provider brings its own controlled delivery infrastructure—playbooks, workflows, diagnostics, and knowledge structures—that integrate with the client environment and materially improve speed and consistency.

◼️ Exit Discipline: Defined disengagement points ensure temporary capacity does not harden into permanent structural cost.

Here is how GLS Legal Support Overflow can help your team. 
 

The Agile Resourcing Strategy station is considered a Specialist resource within the GLS Legal Operations model.

A Foundational Resource: Is responsible for determining the overall performance capabilities of a “critical” legal function. If it is not optimised, the function can never be optimised. 

A Repeater Resource: Supports the performance of multiple "critical" legal functions and as such represents a "ripple effect" productivity intervention point. 

A Specialist Resource: Is responsible for driving the performance of a very specific part of an individual legal function. Its productivity contribution is limited to that single legal function. 

The best practice features of Agile Resourcing are as follows:

◼️ Mobilisation Speed: Resources can be deployed at short notice with minimal friction, enabling legal to respond immediately to workload spikes, transactions, regulatory events, or internal disruption.

◼️ Activation Protocols: Clear, pre-defined “press-go” triggers specify when agile resources can be engaged, by whom, and for what work types—removing delay, debate, and ad-hoc escalation.

◼️ Pre-Approved Talent Pools: Standing access to vetted, contract-ready legal professionals eliminates procurement drag and removes reliance on last-minute firm referrals.

◼️ Aligned Cost: Flexible resourcing is priced at or below the fully-loaded cost of internal headcount once salary, benefits, utilisation risk, and management overhead are factored in—otherwise the model is not genuinely agile.

◼️ Utilisation Efficiency: Capacity is consumed only when needed, avoiding idle internal headcount and eliminating the structural inefficiency embedded in permanent over-resourcing.

◼️ Continuity of Knowledge: Client, matter, and commercial context is preserved across personnel changes, preventing repeated re-learning cycles and loss of institutional memory.

◼️ Active Knowledge Accretion: Client and matter knowledge deliberately accumulates through delivery so capability compounds over time. Knowledge build-up is embedded in the service model—not treated as a chargeable activity.

◼️ Embedded Knowledge Base: Knowledge generated through agile resourcing is captured, consolidated, and reused through templates, playbooks, and systems so value compounds at the operating-model level.

◼️ Knowledge Diagnostics: The provider maintains structured diagnostics evidencing what client knowledge has been captured, retained, and reused—demonstrating cumulative value rather than reset cycles.

◼️ Clear Engagement Protocols: Explicit rules govern when agile resources are deployed, for what work types, and under whose direction—ensuring disciplined use and protecting internal capability.

◼️ Tech and Workflow Integration: Agile resources operate inside the organisation’s legal tech stack, data environment, templates, and workflows—not outside them—ensuring consistency and leverage.

◼️ Client Asset Familiarity: Agile resources are fluent in the client’s approved systems, templates, playbooks, and operating rhythms, enabling seamless delivery without repeated onboarding friction.

◼️ Provider Delivery Assets: The provider brings controlled delivery infrastructure—playbooks, workflows, diagnostics, and knowledge structures—that materially improve speed, consistency, and scalability.

◼️ Performance Transparency: Output, turnaround time, quality, and commercial impact are measured, enabling evidence-based decisions on continued use, optimisation, and scale.

◼️ Specialist Precision: Niche expertise can be accessed exactly when required, without permanent headcount risk or long-term cost lock-in.

◼️ Scalability Control: Resourcing can be flexed up or down predictably in line with workload volatility, deal cycles, and business demand—without organisational shock.

◼️ Operational Robustness: Managed agile resourcing delivers consistent capacity unaffected by leave, illness, internal politics, or corporate noise—ensuring dependable throughput.

◼️ Team and Cultural Alignment: Agile resources are embedded into team norms, delivery standards, and communication rhythms, functioning as an extension of the legal team rather than an external add-on.

◼️ Transformation Intelligence Overlay: The provider analyses demand patterns and delivery data to surface practical insights on how work can be simplified, automated, re-routed, or handled more efficiently over time.

◼️ Management Leverage: Senior internal lawyers remain focused on high-value advisory, stakeholder engagement, and judgment-heavy work rather than firefighting capacity gaps.

The Agile Resourcing station delivers the following value to the Business:

◼️ Faster Legal Service Delivery: On-demand capacity removes structural bottlenecks, enabling legal work to be turned around at the speed the business actually operates.

◼️ Avoidance of Recurring Full-Time Headcount: Short-term demand spikes are addressed without locking the business into permanent roles that quickly become under-utilised once demand normalises.

◼️ Lower Unit Cost of Legal Support: Legal work is delivered at a lower blended cost by reducing reliance on permanent hires and minimising premium external counsel spend.

◼️ Cost Variability Instead of Fixed Overhead: Legal capacity flexes with demand, converting fixed salary commitments into variable, controllable cost.

◼️ Sustained Service Levels: Legal support remains consistent during peak periods, transactions, regulatory change, or internal absences without degradation in responsiveness.

◼️ Improved Commercial Velocity: Faster legal turnaround accelerates contracting, deal execution, and time-to-market for revenue-generating initiatives.

◼️ Operational Resilience: The business is no longer exposed to single-point capacity constraints, enabling continuity during growth, disruption, or change.

◼️ Strategic Responsiveness: Legal can support business pivots, restructures, and growth initiatives immediately rather than becoming a gating function.

◼️ Better Use of Senior Legal Time: Internal leaders stay focused on high-value advisory and decision support instead of capacity firefighting.

◼️ More Predictable Spend: Improved visibility and control over resourcing reduces budget volatility and strengthens planning and investment decisions.

For the Legal Department, Agile Resourcing provides:

◼️ Immediate Capacity Relief: Additional legal capacity can be mobilised in days, not weeks, removing pressure points without recruitment delays, secondments, or law firm onboarding friction.

◼️ Avoidance of Permanent Headcount Decisions: Short-term and cyclical demand is absorbed without forcing the GC into premature or unjustified permanent hiring decisions.

◼️ Superior Alternative to Secondments: Continuity, embedded knowledge, and repeatable delivery are retained without the stop-start disruption, knowledge loss, and cost shock that typically follow secondment exits.

◼️ Protection from Post-Secondment Cost Reversion: When a secondee rolls off, ongoing demand does not automatically revert to premium law firm rates—capacity remains available at a controlled, predictable cost.

◼️ Reduced Management Drag: Less time spent onboarding, supervising, re-explaining context, and managing rotating external lawyers—freeing leadership bandwidth.

◼️ Preservation of Institutional Knowledge: Client, matter, and process knowledge remains embedded in the delivery model and supporting assets rather than walking out the door with individuals.

◼️ Team Knowledge Uplift: Agile resources transfer practical know-how in key subject areas, tools, and ways of working, strengthening the permanent team’s core capability over time.

◼️ Lower Cognitive Load on the Team: Internal lawyers are shielded from constant workload rebalancing, firefighting, and absorption of short-term spikes.

◼️ Micro-Assignment Absorption: Small, fragmented, and time-sensitive tasks are absorbed by the agile model rather than relying on informal “heroics” from already stretched team members.

◼️ Consistent, Always-Available Capacity: Managed agile resourcing delivers dependable throughput unaffected by leave, illness, internal politics, or corporate noise.

◼️ Morale Protection and Confidence: The team knows support is available when pressure builds, reducing burnout risk and improving confidence in the operating model.

◼️ Better Leverage of Senior Lawyers: Senior legal talent stays focused on judgment-heavy advisory, stakeholder engagement, and strategic work—not capacity management.

◼️ More Stable and Predictable Workflows: Work is delivered through consistent processes and operating rhythms rather than fragmented, person-dependent execution.

◼️ Clean Scale-Down Without Capability Loss: Capacity can be reduced without morale impact, organisational disruption, or loss of accumulated knowledge.

◼️ More Sustainable Legal Operations: Fewer crisis resourcing cycles and less reliance on individual heroics support a healthier, more durable legal function.

The Agile Resourcing station is essential for:

◼️Legal Department Leadership

◼️In-House Counsel

◼️Legal Operations Teams

◼️HR & Talent Managers

◼️Executive Management

◼️Risk & Compliance Officers

◼️Internal Audit Functions

A legal team operating without an Agile Resourcing strategy will face a wide range of inefficiencies including:

◼️Overworked lawyers and rising burnout

◼️Inability to meet business demand during peak periods

◼️Increased reliance on expensive external counsel

◼️Poor responsiveness and stakeholder frustration

◼️Missed opportunities due to lack of capacity

◼️Difficulty scaling legal support with business growth

Agile Resourcing is enhanced by technology and often dependent on it for optimal performance:

◼️Legal Ops Platforms – Manage workflows and integrate agile resources.

◼️Talent Management Systems – Track availability and performance of flexible resources.

◼️Collaboration Tools – Enable seamless integration with internal teams.

◼️Automation & AI – Reduce manual workload and support agile delivery.

◼️Budgeting Tools – Monitor spend and ROI of agile engagements.

Technology makes agile resourcing scalable, measurable, and efficient.