The gig economy potentially just got a boost from one of its newest advocates. On-demand legal service provider Lawclerk has announced the official launch of a new service called “Teams,” which it hopes will allow law firms to build trusted networks of freelance attorneys to work with on an ongoing basis.

Talitha Kozlowski, co-founder of Lawclerk and partner at Las Vegas-based Garman Turner Gordon, said Teams is a way for small and solo law firms “to access a variety of legal talent. … You can build your own virtual team of associates and expand as much as you want.”

The new service essentially allows Lawclerk users to save freelance attorneys to a team that can be categorized by practice area or project. Whereas before Lawclerk users had to post projects to the service's marketplace in order to find freelance attorneys, Teams allows them to directly access the profile, including the peer reviews, of such attorneys without first assigning work.

While Teams officially launched today, it had a limited soft launch in October, though users were only able to create one team instead of an unlimited amount that could make up a network of outside legal help.

With the introduction of the full Teams functionality, Lawclerk hopes to foster trusted, mutually beneficial relationships between small law firms and freelance attorneys.

Kristin Tyler, co-founder of Lawclerk and partner at Garman Turner Gordon, noted that since “freelancers can be on multiple teams for multiple attorneys, we do have a number of freelancers that say this is their full-time gig now.”

Likewise, Tyler added that, for small and solo firms, the ability to periodically hire trusted freelance attorneys when demand for work is high can be a more cost-effective option than bringing on full-time associates. “With small law moreso than with larger firms, it's an ebb and flow of work. … If you're in [a slow time] and if you still have associates to pay, it's a stress on a small firm.”

And if a firm ever realizes it needs full-time attorneys to join its staff, it can directly hire the freelancers it works with through Lawclerk. Tyler noted that this has happened twice before. “Both times it was a solo attorney, and they used [Teams] to figure out if they were ready to hire an associate,” she said, adding that “as of now, we don't have anything in our terms of service to prohibit that.”

While Teams is focused on helping small and solo law firms, Tyler and Kozlowski said it was built with an eye toward serving corporate in-house attorneys in the future. However, they did not publicly announce what such an evolution could look like or when it would be released. Lawclerk's current focus is primarily on small and solo law firms.

To be sure, Lawclerk is just one of many legal service providers looking to support freelance hiring in the legal market. Companies such as LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer and InCloudCounsel also are fueling the rise of a gig economy for attorneys.

The proliferation of companies in this market, however, isn't deterring relatively new companies like Lawclerk. In fact, it's encouraging them. “We welcome the competition right now.” Tyler said. “I think it validates the model; it shows the important way the industry is changing to incorporate gig and freelance work. Each of us have a little different model, and it's a huge market.”