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We've all read the stories—or experienced firsthand: people working from home are overloaded and burnt out. As a longtime businesswoman, attorney and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, I've noticed the same thing across legal teams. The stress-inducing WFH dynamic, reduced budgets, furloughs and layoffs within legal teams has left legal teams overwhelmed with work and frantically searching for helpful solutions.

As the founder and CEO of the alternative legal service provider, Zent Law Group, I've been fielding calls from organizations whose legal teams are struggling. I've noticed that some of the legal department leaders are in somewhat of a panic mode, signing up for more support from Big Law regardless of the cost when they could save significantly more with alternative solutions. I've heard several heads of legal operations at client organizations corroborate this panic-purchase phenomenon. Purchasing under duress is never a good idea. We've all witnessed that firsthand with empty supermarket shelves typically holding paper goods and price gouging by unscrupulous suppliers for pandemic-era essentials.

Some of our in-house colleagues are forgetting they have options outside of Big Law that they can and should consider. Make no mistake, these are unusual times that require creative thinking and different approaches. 

Here are three cost-effective solutions that will keep morale high while helping to prevent burnout and productivity issues for in-house legal teams:

• Secondments dedicated to the team: Ideal for clients who need legal resources dedicated to their team. These are normally provided at an all-inclusive cost that is less expensive than hiring an employee for what could be a short-term need. Secondments make sense when budget overruns are not an option. Plus, the added bonus is you can potentially hire the resource after working with them for a period of time.

• Subscriptions address ongoing needs: These are for clients with ongoing needs and a steady stream of work in a certain practice area (such as all transactions for a given line of business) that can be supported off-site. They offer the benefit of a cost-effective pricing structure while budgeting and forecasting legal spend with absolute certainty. Our subscriptions allow clients to manage overflow legal work, spikes in workflow, special projects or any other legal support needed in that given practice area with absolute certainty as to cost.

• Legal operations consulting optimizes efficiency: With the increasing pressures felt by legal teams during this crisis comes a decrease in legal operations efficiencies. Having the ability to evaluate and adjust a wide variety of processes, methodologies and technologies is critical to success. Legal operations consultants put a strong focus on data and metrics to conserve legal spend, maximize legal resources and evaluate processes and solutions within legal departments—all necessary steps at this juncture. At ZentLaw, within our legal operations solutions is a contract administration service. We're finding that legal teams are overwhelmed with contracting needs and having to refine contract processes. 

Finally, in this era where a diversity and inclusion program in an organization needs to be far more than lip service, organizations would be wise to walk the walk. This is the time when legal teams should reexamine their in-house culture to assess what can be done to improve it within their department and their company at large. 

The bottom line: If your legal team is showing signs of cracking, don't despair. Have an open mind, consider the many alternative solutions out there and simply be better.

Monica Zent is ZentLaw's CEO and founder of LawDesk 360.