Robert Ambrogi Blog
A new website called Legably aims to enable solo and small-firm lawyers to handle higher workloads by hiring other attorneys on an on-demand basis.
The site matches attorneys who are looking for extra work with attorneys who have projects with which they need help.
Notably, Legably has entered into a partnership with Clio to be integrated into its practice management platform, Legably’s founder Daniel P. Reilly told me earlier this week. This will allow attorneys who obtain work through Legably to submit invoices from within Clio.
Reilly, an attorney in Providence, R.I., said that he decided to start Legably because he felt that other temporary-hiring sites for attorneys, such as Hire an Esquire, focused on serving the large-firm market. He wanted a site that would focus on solo practitioners and small-to-medium sized firms.
“I created Legably to allow attorneys to flexibly find work for other attorneys who need help with short-term projects and special help that may require particular expertise,” Reilly said.
(Note that there are other freelance networks serving solos and small firms. One I wrote about not long ago is the Now Counsel Network.)
Attorneys looking to obtain work can post their profiles on the site for free. Project listings are matched to their profiles based on legal expertise, physical location, experience and rating. Job seekers receive email alerts of matching listings, which they can then view on Legably’s dashboard.
The attorney looking for work can then message the hiring attorney and they can negotiate terms and fees. The negotiation can take place through the platform or outside it.
Legably charges the hiring attorney 8.5 percent of the fee paid to the project attorney.
The project attorney is treated as a W-2 employee of Legably. Legably uses a third-party payroll service to make all appropriate deductions and payments.
Legably has been operating since October and more formally launched in January, Reilly said. The company is now working on finalizing its integration with Clio, and along with the engineering for that, it is also working on refinements to the Legably platform.