With fractional leadership on the rise, this article explores how law firms are embracing these roles and explores some of the benefits they can bring.

First of all, what is a fractional role?

A fractional role is one usually filled by a C-suite professional who has extensive experience in a particular area of expertise, e.g. IT, knowledge management, project management, finance, marketing and so on. As the name suggests, ‘fractional’ roles are not a full-time headcount role but allow businesses of all sizes to engage with an experienced individual on a flexible time basis that reflects the firm’s needs. The amount of time required should be easy to flex, aligning input and costs with the business as its needs change.

Why not just employ a full-time person?

The initial benefit firms are hoping for when considering fractional roles is the ability to access highly qualified people without the long-term financial commitment of hiring a permanent employee (including a full benefits package) as part of the headcount. A firm may consider a fractional role for a longer-term project or only require a couple of days a month from someone with the level of experience that they need – paying for this on a full-time basis may be an overhead the firm wants to avoid.

Other benefits include accessing the expertise a fractional hire has gained from working with other firms and in other sectors that they can bring to your firm (subject, of course, to respecting any confidentiality obligations). Firms can usually easily flex these fractional resources up or down ensuring they only pay for the time they want for as long as it’s needed. A key part of our fractional services at 3Kites is to embody a leadership and mentoring role where we work with internal teams to ensure they are aligning with the wider business, delivering on agreed objectives with the ability to report on successes and respond quickly to any issues. All of which is done without the need to lock your firm into a long-term agreement, as we believe our clients should continue to use us because our service delivers great value rather than because of a contracted commitment.

What do fractional roles look like in reality? Here are a few examples:

The first fractional role we provided to our clients was a fractional IT director in 2020 (although we have been provided interim roles for more than 10 years). While we started out with a vision of what a fractional IT director role could consist of, it quickly changed to align with our client’s requirements. Many firms take us on to enable their teams to reach the next level of strategic thinking or sophistication, often because the business has grown so now needs to put more formal systems and processes in place. Our first project, working alongside the partner assigned responsibility for IT at the firm, was to work with an internal IT team to create and deliver on an IT strategy and to advise the board on IT trends and future risks and opportunities. Nearly four years later, we are still working with the team on the delivery of its recently updated IT strategy, assisting with larger projects and advising the firm’s fee earning departments on where IT can add value to their business processes.

For other clients, we provide fractional IT directors to cover areas such as team mentoring (we often say the real value 3Kites provide is aligning business service teams with fee earners’ requirements), supplier management, project management and representing IT at the C-suite so that the voice of the function is heard when management makes strategic decisions and investments. Unlike our first client, some engagements provide relatively short-term input after which our time falls away until another large project comes into view.

Our fractional roles have expanded in the last year and we now provide both fractional knowledge management directors and fractional project services in addition to our fractional IT directors.

Our fractional knowledge management directors provide a range of services to a wide range of law firms ( from small to large), including:

• keeping up with strategic thinking and latest developments in knowledge management (KM) and generative AI while a permanent resource is found or to help an internal partner who is not a KM expert to understand which projects might usefully be carried out;
• aligning KM initiatives with overall business strategy and helping to formulate a prioritised implementation roadmap for initiatives;
• ensuring co-ordination among existing knowledge staff (professional support lawyers/knowledge lawyers, library/research staff, knowledge managers, legal tech product owners, etc.), conducting/contributing to appraisals of those staff, the setting of their priorities and objectives, and lending an experienced voice to the recruitment process for new knowledge team hires;
• assessing and developing legal learning programmes and competency frameworks. 

Our fractional project services provide services including:

• access to experienced programme/project management (PM) resources where their own programme/project management office (PMO) function is in its infancy or has not yet been created;
• articulating what a PMO function means in that firm, what works well, what processes or systems need attention and where any gaps may be;
• mentorship of internal colleagues to upskill in-house resources to run the service independently when the fractional role comes to an end.

In today’s economic climate (where law firms’ budgets are squeezed but the risk, compliance, IT security and KM/legaltech landscape is more complex, fast moving and demanding than ever), the rise of fractional roles is helping firms to stay ahead of these changes and is therefore becoming increasingly important.  

If you think we could help your business to stay ahead of the curve without a permanent employee price tag, please get in touch.  

For further information about 3Kites fractional services, please contact Jon Howells on 07917 367872 or email [email protected]. 

Jon Howells is a director of 3Kites. This is the 46th article in the series Navigating Legaltech. 

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About 3Kites and Kemp IT Law  
3Kites is an independent consultancy, which is to say that we have no ties or arrangements with any suppliers so that we can provide our clients with unfettered advice. We have been operating since 2006 and our consultants include former law firm partners (one a managing partner), a GC, two law firm IT directors and an owner of a practice management company. This blend of skills and experience puts us in a unique position when providing advice on IT strategy, fractional IT management, knowledge management, product selections, process review (including the legal process) and more besides. 3Kites often works closely with Kemp IT Law (KITL), a boutique law firm offering its clients advice on IT services and related areas such as GDPR. Where relevant (eg when discussing cloud computing in a future article) this column may include content from the team at KITL to provide readers with a broader perspective including any regulatory considerations.