Most legal departments turn to flexible talent the way they turn to a fire extinguisher: only when something is already burning. A leave of absence opens up, a hiring freeze hits at the worst time, a workload spike arrives faster than headcount can be approved, and flexible talent becomes the stopgap that gets the department through it. But a growing number of teams are starting to treat it as something more deliberate: a standing part of their legal resourcing strategy rather than a temporary solution.
At FlexFest 2026, Aaron Boersma, Spend Innovation Lead for Legal Ops+ at Ford, joins Matt Wheatley, Chief Commercial Officer at Priori, to talk through how that shift takes shape. Aaron will share how his team has come to think about flexible talent as one option alongside internal headcount, outside counsel, and other legal service providers, and how those pieces fit together into a more intentional resourcing strategy.
It’s a practical look at a question more legal departments are facing: as the work becomes more varied, how do you match each type of matter to the resource best equipped to handle it? Drawing on his own experience, Aaron will unpack where flexible talent creates the most value, what it takes to integrate it well, and which lessons other legal departments can apply as they build more deliberate resourcing strategies.
Building a More Intentional Legal Resourcing Strategy
Many legal departments first engage flexible talent during periods of change. A hiring gap appears. Workload increases unexpectedly. A specialized project requires expertise that does not exist internally.
As legal departments gain more experience with flexible talent, many begin to view it through a broader strategic lens. The conversation expands beyond filling temporary needs and becomes part of a larger discussion about how legal work should be resourced across the organization.
Internal lawyers, outside counsel, ALSPs, flexible legal talent, and AI each bring different strengths. Building an effective legal resourcing strategy requires understanding where each resource creates the greatest value and creating a consistent framework for allocating work accordingly. That broader perspective sits at the center of Ford’s approach.
Rethinking Where Legal Work Belongs
Many legal departments already use flex talent but don’t know where it fits strategically in their resourcing strategy.
Which matters belong with outside counsel?
Which justify another full-time hire?
And which are better handled by an embedded lawyer who can ramp quickly, work alongside your team, and leave when the need passes?
Legal work is becoming more varied, and so are the ways organizations choose to resource it.
Some matters benefit from lawyers who understand the business and work closely with internal stakeholders every day. Other matters call for highly specialized outside counsel. Certain projects are well suited for ALSPs, while others benefit from legal professionals who can quickly integrate with an existing team and provide focused support for a defined period of time.
One of the characteristics that makes flexible talent valuable is proximity to the business. Flexible legal professionals can work within internal systems, collaborate closely with business partners, and build context around the organization’s objectives while providing the flexibility that many legal departments need.
As organizations become more deliberate about legal resourcing, decisions increasingly focus on matching the nature of the work with the resource best equipped to perform it.
Building Systems That Support Better Legal Resourcing Decisions
As flexible talent becomes a larger part of legal resourcing, legal operations also plays a larger role in supporting those decisions.
Managing vendor relationships, coordinating interviews, standardizing commercial terms, and creating a consistent hiring experience all require time and coordination. When those activities are distributed across many individual hiring managers, they can create unnecessary administrative work and inconsistent processes.
Aaron will discuss how his team centralized much of that coordination while keeping hiring decisions with the lawyers leading the work. The goal is to make resourcing easier, reduce administrative burden, and provide hiring managers with better information while preserving their ability to choose the legal professionals who best fit their teams.
That philosophy reflects a broader role for legal operations. Building systems that support better decisions can be just as valuable as making the decisions themselves.
Why This Matters Now
Legal departments are entering a period of significant change. AI is creating new opportunities to automate routine work, while also creating greater uncertainty about future workloads, staffing needs, and the skills organizations will need over time.
That environment makes flexibility increasingly valuable.
Many legal departments have already concluded that flexible talent can play an important role within their organizations. The conversation now focuses on how to identify the right legal professionals, integrate them effectively, and make flexible talent part of a long-term legal resourcing strategy.
Hear From Ford’s Legal Ops+ Leader at FlexFest 2026
Aaron Boersma is the Spend Innovation Lead for Policy & Legal Ops+ at Ford, where he leads legal resourcing strategy across internal teams, outside counsel, and flexible legal talent. Before joining Ford, he held pricing and legal operations roles at Google and Butler Snow LLP and co-founded White Shoe AI, bringing together experience in legal operations, legal pricing, and emerging technology.
Together with Matt Wheatley, Chief Commercial Officer at Priori, Aaron will discuss how Ford developed its legal resourcing model, what the team has learned through implementation, and which lessons other legal departments can apply as they build more intentional approaches to resourcing legal work.
As legal departments continue to evolve, legal resourcing is becoming a strategic capability rather than an operational necessity. Understanding how internal teams, outside counsel, flexible talent, and technology work together will shape how legal organizations build capacity in the years ahead.
The session, “Case Study: How Organizations Can Build a More Intentional Legal Resourcing Model,“ is part of FlexFest 2026. Registration is now open at resources.priorilegal.com/flex-fest.
