We’ve all read the stories—or experienced firsthand: people working from home are overloaded and burnt out. As a longtime businesswoman, attorney and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, I’ve noticed the same thing across legal teams. The stress-inducing WFH dynamic, reduced budgets, furloughs and layoffs within legal teams has left legal teams overwhelmed with work and frantically searching for helpful solutions.

As the founder and CEO of the alternative legal service provider, Zent Law Group, I’ve been fielding calls from organizations whose legal teams are struggling. I’ve noticed that some of the legal department leaders are in somewhat of a panic mode, signing up for more support from Big Law regardless of the cost when they could save significantly more with alternative solutions. I’ve heard several heads of legal operations at client organizations corroborate this panic-purchase phenomenon. Purchasing under duress is never a good idea. We’ve all witnessed that firsthand with empty supermarket shelves typically holding paper goods and price gouging by unscrupulous suppliers for pandemic-era essentials.