Resource management (RM) is a critical business services function that can add tremendous value to the way matters are commercially resourced and delivered for our clients, as well as enhancing employee experience. 

Within the legal sector, resource management is still typically in its infancy. Some law firms are only just beginning to adopt the framework, which is in stark comparison to the ‘Big 4’ who pioneered RM more than ten years ago. As early adopters for the legal sector, we recognised the value that RM could add to a law firm and its clients. Five years on, we are an established and integrated team of resourcing professionals.

Legal resource management

In the legal sector, RM is acutely different in terms of responsibilities and expectations. The basic principles of RM still apply, such as identifying the right skilled individual for the right client matter at the right time, as does the urgency to deploy people immediately, particularly in high volume transactional teams. However, due to this framework being relatively new to the legal industry, it requires a more tailored and personalised approach.

Typically, RM is initially launched into a single team that has high transactional volume so that RM can instantly take ownership of day-to-day role fulfillment. Immediately there are benefits – partners and associates spend less time trying to resource matters and, importantly, more time working with clients. This typical pilot-style approach allows RM to prove its value in both monetary terms and people experience whilst gaining the trust of the business. 

Once trust is gained, the role of RM expands beyond day-to-day deployment as epitomised by the responsibilities of a resource manager who rotates between being a credible business partner to leadership, getting involved in strategic-level initiatives to improve business health, and supporting the career development of the associates. Having a broader impact on the business and a deeper impact within the teams they are working with allows the RM team to build on the deep trusted relationships forged with stakeholders at all levels. This tailored approach is then applied to the next team or practice group and expansion continues, rather than a full launch across all practice groups and teams simultaneously.

Our approach to resource management: What sets us apart?

Use of innovative resourcing technology

We use a platform called Vantage, provided by BigHand, which allows fee earners to forecast their commitments and indicate their current and desired skills. Vantage helps our RM team to assess future capacity and predicted activity levels by team and location, search for capacity and capability and ensure we can both anticipate, and react quickly to, fluctuations in resourcing requirements on our clients’ matters. 

Our close working relationship with BigHand has allowed us to drive innovation within the platform and we have recently launched the Vantage opportunities board across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. This feature has been developed to provide visibility and transparency of career development opportunities for fee earners and advertise enrichment activities and secondments that match fee earner skills and interests, allowing our clients to benefit from the breadth of talent that we have across EMEA. 

“The Vantage opportunities board helped me to quickly identify opportunities that I was both interested in and matched my skill-set. As I am currently based in our Paris office, the opportunities board has created transparency of opportunities across EMEA and has successfully allowed me to work on two pro bono engagements that are contributing towards my end-of-year hours’ target.” 

Charlotte Hillyard, senior innovation lawyer (banking and finance).

International resourcing

To maximise the effectiveness of the RM team, we have coverage across Europe, the Middle East and Asia to drive cross-border resourcing, which helps to manage peaks and troughs across the region and provides developmental opportunities for the fee earners to work on. The Vantage opportunities board has supported our growth in this area and is certainly where we see our greatest potential.

Access to multiple skill sets and people-centric teams 

Our RM team sits across NRF Transform, our global change and innovation function, and the People and Culture team which consists of several people-centric teams. 

Being advantageously positioned within NRF Transform allows RM to resource matters with a commercial mindset, selecting resources from our pools of multidisciplinary teams as well as lawyers at the right level and from the best location; this applies to both staffing matters, as well as driving improvements in our matter resourcing processes. As an example, we have recently leveraged the innovation team to provide tailored analysis of multiple sets of data, specifically around fee earner hours and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). Using the data, RM provided a team-by-team analysis to improve equitable distribution of work across teams. 

In addition, being part of the People and Culture team allows us to be more involved in talent management, collaborating with teams to conduct high-level succession planning and driving a high-performance culture. On an individual level, we listen to fee earners’ career aspirations, suggesting upcoming matters that align with these, and often provide career counsellor conversations as part of the role.

What's next? 

In future insight articles, our RM team will talk through advancements in our approach and the deep beneficial impact for both our business and our clients.

For any questions, queries, or if you would like any advice, please get in touch with Sam Larkins, Head of Resource Management.