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How secondments are helping GCs design legal teams that scale with business demand
General Counsel today are operating under pressure. Budgets are tight, teams are lean, and decisions are made at pace. The business expects legal to turn work around faster, apply sharper judgement, and operate as a true strategic partner. Permanent hiring is often operationally difficult, while defaulting to external law firms for every requirement quickly becomes financially unsustainable.
This is where secondments have emerged beyond 'gap fillers'. They are seen as a smart solution—one that aligns far better with how modern legal departments need to operate. They can support routine, high-volume work that demands speed and consistency just as effectively as they can contribute strategic judgement on complex or high-stakes matters.
Why secondments work
Unlike conventional contract staffing, secondments give GCs access to experienced lawyers and compliance professionals with specialised expertise who can step in quickly, integrate seamlessly, and deliver outcomes. Whether it is a surge in contracting, a transaction with moving pieces, a regulatory challenge, or a critical internal initiative, secondments allow legal teams to scale without the long-term cost and commitment of permanent headcount.
What makes secondments particularly effective is that they combine the flexibility of external counsel with the advantage of being embedded like an in-house hire. Secondees work closely with internal stakeholders, understand business priorities in real time, and operate as a true extension of the legal team—not as consultants working from the outside in.
Over the last decade, secondments have also become a tool for agility. They allow GCs to respond to shifting demands without constantly restructuring headcount. When workloads spike, teams expand; when projects conclude, structures remain lean. In an environment where priorities can change quickly, this flexibility matters.
From capacity to capability
We are also seeing secondments support legal teams as they move beyond traditional legal delivery. GCs are increasingly building capabilities such as legal operations, AI governance, and global legal delivery models. Legal ops secondees help streamline contracting workflows, build SOPs, strengthen reporting, and improve coordination. AI governance secondees—working at the intersection of legal, technology, and risk—are becoming critical as organisations deploy AI at scale and navigate questions of compliance and responsible use. These roles help legal teams stay ahead of emerging risks while freeing senior lawyers to focus on high-value strategic work.
The expanding scope of legal secondments
Across legal teams, we have seen secondments work best when they are designed around outcomes rather than capacity alone. As a model, secondments have proven adaptable, working just as well for steadily recurring work as for discrete, strategic assignments.
That range is reflected in the ways secondments are being deployed in practice. We have seen senior transactional lawyers embedded to support business-vertical divestments, working closely with operational teams, in-house counsel, and external advisers to drive transactions end-to-end. We have also seen organisations setting up Global Capability Centres in India use secondments to pilot Global Legal Desk models that support cross-jurisdictional contracting. In other instances, teams have turned to secondments during contracting – or compliance-heavy periods, bringing in professionals who can step in quickly without compromising on quality.
Secondments also offer GCs a practical way to test and build capability—whether to create bandwidth during a critical phase, add niche expertise for a specific project, or pilot what a new role could look like before making a long-term commitment.
For GCs balancing speed, cost, quality, and complexity, secondments offer a powerful way to scale expertise, strengthen delivery, and position legal as a genuine business enabler. Our experience suggests the secondment should be viewed as more than a workaround or a temporary fix—it is a model that belongs to the core architecture of modern legal teams.
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