Of course, there are shareware and freeware fonts out there, for which this treatment would be legal.
But, for retail font licenses, even if the license allows format conversion, I don't know of a single such license that would allow freelancers to give copies of the fonts they're working with to a client/employer. Certainly ours (Adobe's) does not, although in general it is one of the most liberal retail font licenses out there.
If a freelancer does work for you in Photoshop, do you expect them to give you a copy of Photoshop to continue that work? Of course not - you'd license your own copy. It's usually the same case with fonts.
Regards,
T