Interim Legal Consultants in the Middle East
Across the world, interim legal recruitment has dramatically increased over the last 10 years. There are now several dedicated platforms to interim legal hires, outperforming many permanent recruitment firms and their own permanent divisions. However, the Middle East has failed to keep up with this trend, hindered by several factors including expat-focused hiring, visa challenges, and career-driven hiring markets.
But, this is changing. Some of the aforementioned interim recruitment agencies are establishing Middle East offices, and permanent agencies are looking at how to support temporary legal hires.
A business should look at interim hires for one of several reasons:
Maternity cover
Long-term sick leave
Gaps after a resignation
Projects
Spikes in work
In the Middle East, there are several ways that companies can hire staff on a temporary basis.
Fixed Term Contract
This is the most straight-forward way to hire interim. The hire becomes a temporary employee of the company, is on the payroll, and received all the perks and benefits of being an employee. This is, however, often costly and time consuming, and is best reserved for when a business has the finances and headcount capability.
Third-Party Hiring
When a business doesn’t want to add the hire to their direct employment, a third-party hire is available. This is where the hire becomes an employee of another entity, which is established to provide visa, payroll, and other legal requirements to the hire. They therefore act as an independent consultant, but the business must ensure they have the suitable liability insurance to do this. This is often useful when spending different budgets on the spend, for example using ‘external legal spend’ for salary instead of HR spend.
Freelance
In the Middle East, many countries allow individuals to have a freelance visa and therefore can operate independently from the company or any other entity. They are providing freelance consultancy services to the company, and get paid one sum for their work (on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly basis). They can work for multiple companies at once.
Depending on your circumstances as a business, it is almost always possible to find a way to hire someone on a temporary basis. Reach out to CS for a more detailed conversation about how to find your next Interim Lawyer.