Building Out a Real Estate Finance Team with Interim Counsel

The Challenge

Our financial services client sought to expand their real estate investment group and needed to hire multiple real estate and finance attorney experts to build out the team. They required attorneys with in-depth knowledge of leveraged buyouts, mezzanine finance and joint ventures efforts for sophisticated transactions. The attorneys needed to handle a heavy and specialized workload, demonstrate strong emotional intelligence in engaging outside partners and integrate seamlessly into the company culture before committing to full-time employment.

The Solution

Within three days of receiving the job description, MLA Interim Legal Talent provided a slate of eight qualified interim counsel for consideration. The interim counsel consultants were interviewed almost immediately, and after an expedited on-boarding process, multiple interim counsel consultants began their assignment within two weeks. Though the client initially sought two attorneys, they ended up hiring five due to the quality of the slate of interim counsel presented.

The Results

By hiring interim counsel, MLA Interim’s client was able to ensure a high-quality match and assess cultural fit and performance before making permanent hires. After seeing the abilities of these attorneys in action, all five interim counsel were converted into permanent, full-time employees. In addition, the group of interim counsel ensured the businesses objectives and deadlines were met at a fraction of the cost of outside counsel.

Integrating the group of interim counsel into the legal department and the new real estate finance group allowed our client to better manage the workload of their projects, resulting in a positive work-life balance for all involved. Our client has since requested to add two more interim counsel consultants to the team through a contract to hire model.