At the turn of the New Year, I finished reading Edwin Friedman's 'A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix'. Friedman explains that 'burn-out' is not a result of simply taking on too much work, but rather a symptom of assuming responsibility for the problems of too many others. Interpreting 'burn-out' as a relational rather than quantitative issue made sense to me. After all, the two places I have seen the most burnout are in attorneys and human resources professionals - both highly-relational professions that require personal assumption of others' problems.
If Friedman's theory is correct, then the fractional model is uniquely qualified to provide the most responsible and affordable relief for 'overflow' of a business's legal and employment issues (including the preparation of employment agreements and employee handbooks, mediating intraoffice conflicts, and resolving difficult terminations).
Rather than forcing existing resources to work themselves to burn-out, or shelling out the funds for another full-time salary, businesses can turn to fractional general counsel like Out-House Attorneys, LLC.
In addition to representing its own standalone clients, Out-House Attorneys operates as a natural extension of existing legal and HR departments. It allows these businesses to maintain an ongoing on-call relationship with legal and employment professionals who knows their business inside and out - including its mission, operations, and culture - for when volumes get a little out of hand. These businesses enjoy this extra resource at relatively little expense compared to a full-time salary or outside counsel because our time and costs are shared with other businesses just like them. They can also terminate the engagement at any time.
If your legal or HR team is overwhelmed, if you are trying to figure out how your bottom-line can support another full-time, non-billable salary, or if you just need an affordable resource for your overflow, contact Out-House Attorneys. Our engagement options are flexible, and our retainers cost really are a fraction of typical attorney fees.
