2020 has been a challenging year, with the in-house community facing new and novel challenges in responding to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To benchmark the impact of the pandemic on recruitment, we recently undertook a survey of in-house legal professionals in Australia.
Fitting in to a new office environment can be daunting, even if you’re going in on a permanent basis and will have more time to get to know the team and familiarise yourself with the landscape. But as a contractor, with the understanding that you won’t be there for long, you’re faced with a real dilemma: put effort into making short-term connections or just keep to yourself and risk feeling isolated?
The good news is it’s easier than some people might think to gain the right traction, make a positive impact and impress your new client in your first few days on the job.
Interviewing for a job is never easy, and can be all the more difficult when it's a virtual interview. All the standard advice about how to prepare for and perform during an interview still applies, but there are key differences to prepare for the next time you find yourself interviewing online.
Head of Orbit, Greg Monks shares his top 10 tips for a successful virtual interview.
Your LinkedIn profile can be a powerful tool, particularly when it has the right information. LinkedIn profiles are central to modern networking, hiring and recruiting practices.
Here are some tips for standing out on LinkedIn.
Your CV is one of the most important tools you have to impress your potential employer. An impressive CV is your best chance of progressing to interview, and not ending up in the “no” pile.
There is no one right way to write a CV: each one will be unique to its author. Knowing what to put in and what to leave out can make writing a CV a daunting task.
Here are some top tips to best showcase your skills and experience.
Whether you’re in-house, in private practice or looking for a new opportunity, mentoring provides an avenue to exchange support and guidance on matters from the day-to-day to career-defining decisions. Here are 3 qualities that make a mentoring relationship truly great.
As organisations navigate the “new normal” in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, one thing is consistent across all sectors: uncertainty.
Unfortunately no one has a crystal ball, so the extent of the impact that COVID-19 will have on the economy, and particularly on in-house legal teams, remains to be seen. However, as the number of unexpected projects and legal issues rise and personnel numbers dwindle or remain static under headcount freezes, it is clear that there will be an increased burden carried by already lean in-house legal teams.
So, how can organisations ease the burden and attract talent during a hiring freeze?
This year’s International Women's Day theme is #EachforEqual. But what does that really mean? According to the International Women's Day website:
“An equal world is an enabled world. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, each one of us can help create a gender equal world.”
At Orbit, we decided to take up that challenge and actively celebrate the achievements of three women we think are quite remarkable: Hayley Parkes, Tracey Roper and Katrina Bobeff.
With less than 111 days left, here is how you can make those New Year resolutions happen! Many of us return to work in January with the best of intentions to use this traditionally quieter time to think about what we want to achieve over the course of the year. We write a long to do list (the first half of which is copied over from last year’s list) and resolve that this year we WILL get them done.
Parachuting into a new organisation truly is an art – and is an important aspect of the “personal branding” of a contract lawyer. We asked our Orbit lawyers to share their thoughts on the best ways to hit the ground running on a new contract. Here are their top 7 tips for fitting in fast.
At the end of an Orbit assignment, we ask our lawyers what the top three things they will be looking for in their next contract are. The results of the FY19 surveys highlight many of the benefits offered though a career as a contract lawyer.
For lawyers in firms or in-house roles, working flexibly usually involves flexible hours or days, remote working or job-sharing. You can do all of that working as a contract lawyer, but you also have the opportunity to carve out a flexible year and a flexible career.
Ten hours, or ten points. That’s how much continuing legal education lawyers are required to reach each year. But if you’re working as a contract lawyer, rather than as part of an in-house team or in private practice, how do you make sure that you have the opportunity to continue to learn, to meet your formal professional obligations and to help build your practice?
We’re all pretty comfortable with the concept of job-sharing. It involves two people working on a part-time or reduced-time basis and sharing the workload and responsibilities that would normally be performed by one, full-time person. It’s a form of working that gives employees flexibility together with the comfort of actually having time off knowing that the workload is being covered when they’re not there. It also provides an organisation and co-workers with confidence that someone in that role can assist when needed.
But how does that job-sharing translate when the job itself is a flexible one? Is it possible to layer job-sharing on top of a contract legal position? How would it work? And what are the benefits of doing so?
As we approach International Women’s Day, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the workplace practices that have helped us move closer to gender parity and enabled women to fully thrive in their careers.
We spoke to many in-house counsel at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s national conference in Brisbane last month. From our conversations it was clear in-house teams face a variety of challenges and the conference was a great opportunity to share knowledge about new technologies, best practices for internal collaboration, and using flexible lawyers to augment in-house teams and help them achieve better results.
To quantify the real pressure-points, we surveyed attendees* about the challenges they face. The results confirmed that there are a wide variety of challenges confronting in-house counsel. In this survey report, we clustered those issues into 16 distinct groups. While this diversity of issues reflects the variety in size and shape of in-house communities, some challenges were common.
Most clients we speak with understand the commercial benefits of bringing in flexible lawyers to cover resource and skill gaps in their teams. But there are wider benefits of augmenting your legal team with flexible lawyers – and in this article we look at the best way to integrate Orbit lawyers alongside your in-house lawyers to produce a truly high-performing team.
We talk to lawyers every day about whether they’re ready to fly from the private practice or in-house nest and become a contract lawyer. In our latest thought piece, we examine the key skills which make modern lawyers successful.
The good news is your learning doesn’t stop when you walk out of your employer’s door. Through a broad range of flexible lawyering experiences, Orbit lawyers rapidly develop critical technical and relationship skills.
From 14-16 November 2018, we’ll be co-hosting the 2018 ACC Australia National Conference Mentoring Lounge at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
While there, we’re inviting delegates to tell us the top 3 challenges faced by their legal team and join our mailing list to go into the draw to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5” tablet.
In April, the Diversity Council of Australia highlighted some of the myths and misconceptions about flexible working, noting that flexible working “increases teamwork, reciprocity and ownership of the solution, reduces management time, and speeds decision-making”. With the experience of working in a variety of environments, we find Orbit lawyers are able to quickly build on these skills and more to make them highly sought after assets.
