Legal secondment

A legal secondment is an arrangement in which a lawyer from a law firm works on a dedicated basis at the client's offices for a defined period, embedded in its daily operation, while the firm retains technical direction of the engagement and professional responsibility for the deliverables. For the company, the appeal is having legal capacity inside the operation without opening a headcount: the lawyer understands the business from within, joins the meetings and resolves day-to-day matters with full context, rather than fielding isolated questions by email. It is common in legal departments facing a defined project, a sustained increase in workload or the temporary absence of a team member, and also in companies that do not yet justify an in-house lawyer but already need a permanent legal presence. What sets a secondment apart from simply hiring an outside lawyer is that the seconded professional is backed by the firm's full structure: partner review, access to other specialties, and continuity of accumulated knowledge, which remains available once the engagement ends. In Chile it is used in both full-time and part-time arrangements, with days of presence defined according to what the operation requires.