Clarification, 7/11/12, 11:45 a.m. EDT: While this story refers to Axiom as a “long-term legal temp placement agency” that phrasing doesn’t fully explain the company’s traditional business line. Most of Axiom’s work is high-end legal work for Fortune 500 companies–including assignments where Axiom is retained as ongoing outside counsel.
For much of its 12-year history, Axiom Global Inc. has been little more than a long-term legal temp placement agency. It took advantage of a ready supply of dissatisfied and burned-out Big Law refugees and in-house legal departments looking to keep overhead down. Like other temp agencies, the company played little to no role in how its 450 temp attorneys, who worked from their own homes or clients’ offices, fulfilled work assignments. Axiom was simply the middleman between the temps and the firm’s Fortune 500 corporate clients. It’s been a lucrative line of workespecially during the Great Recession. Axiom posted revenues of $130 million in 2011, a 62 percent increase over the prior year.
