By Olivia Clarke, Published by Chicago Lawyer
After practicing law for three years in the U.S. Navy JAG Corps, Dustin Reichard tried to find a job at a Chicago law firm. Reichard, a DePaul University College of Law graduate, went on countless interviews for litigation positions, and received very low offers -- in some cases, the positions required a $20,000 pay cut. To make ends meet, he began doing temporary work at law firms while he continued searching for a job.
Three years later, he's still a temporary, or contract, lawyer -- but he hasn't given up his search for a full-time job as a lawyer.
"Luckily my first [contract] project lasted 23 months," Reichard said. "Now, that is unheard of, because there are more and more contract lawyers and the market is a little flooded."
Like Reichard, many lawyers today get hired on a temporary basis to work on assignments for law firms or corporations.
Some lawyers enjoy the situation because it gives them more freedom, and removes them from law firm politics. Others wish one of their projects would turn into a full-time, permanent job.
With associate pay increasing at a rapid pace, this trend of hiring contract lawyers also grows because it can be an affordable option for clients. It can also free up associates to do other tasks.
Kathy Morris, founder of Under Advisement, Limited, a legal career counseling service, said the hiring of contract lawyers "hasn't grown exponentially, but it's become a fairly common tool in the arsenal."
Jerry H. Biederman, managing partner of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, said his firm uses contract lawyers fairly frequently. Some of them have worked with the firm for several years.
"When a firm has a temporary surge in work, it's a means of getting it done without working your staff 32-hundred hours a year or adding people that there may not be work for when the project is finished," Biederman said. "Beyond that, they sometimes are able to provide expertise in specialized areas on a relatively long-term basis." A common occurrence Hildebrandt International's 2007 Client Advisory, which discusses trends in the 2006 legal industry, described the growing use of contract lawyers.
According to the advisory, "In recent years, the number of contract lawyers employed by large firms has increased dramatically, with some firms using literally hundreds of such 'temporary' lawyers every year.
"Firms have increasingly found the use of contract lawyers [to be] a sensible way to employ their resources more efficiently and to avoid the common problem of overstaffing to meet the needs of a particular case or client."
With the amount of money that partnership-track lawyers earn, Hildebrandt vice president Joel Henning said law firms and corporate legal departments see the financial benefits of hiring contract lawyers who don't need to be paid those enormous salaries.
"For someone who hasn't been able to find a permanent partnership-track position and who might also like the idea of less pressure, less responsibility, it could be an ideal intermediate type of job or even a permanent job," Henning said. "Not everybody wants to be an equity partner in a major law firm."
Curtis Linder, president and owner of Linder Legal Staffing, Inc., said the publication of the American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 88-356 in 1988 "opened the flood gates nationally, allowing clients, from both law firms and corporate legal departments, to be able to utilize contract lawyers."
Formal Opinion 88-356 described guidelines for law firms and temporary lawyers concerning conflicts of interest and confidentiality.
And the opinion said law firms could use placement agencies where the agency's fee is a proportion of the lawyer's compensation if the "professional independence of the lawyer is maintained without interference by the agency, the total fee paid by each client to the law firm is reasonable, and the arrangement otherwise is in accord with the guidelines in this opinion."
Some large projects that are repetitive, and not highly technical, can be economically staffed by contract lawyers, Morris said. It gives those firms another option for client service.
These lawyers often have good credentials and possess impressive backgrounds, she said.
A contract lawyer can be a person between jobs, Morris said. Sometimes the lawyer may not be looking for a full-time or long-term commitment, either due to a life stage, like starting a family, or due to other goals, like writing a book.
Contract lawyers typically do the most laborious, but less senior, work, said Gary Wolfson, a partner at Blackman Kallick Legal Staffing, which provides contract attorneys to law firms and law departments. They typically get paid significantly less than associates, Wolfson said.
"It's cost-effective for the firms to have this work done in this manner, which frees up their limited associate resources and also saves the clients [money]," he said.
These lawyers usually agree to work intensely for a couple of months, knowing they will then get extended time off, Wolfson said. They may even have private practices they operate around an assignment. Some contract lawyers may like the freedom to pick and choose when they work. At the same time, they may want to work yearlong but haven't found the right firm or don't want to commit to a career at one firm.
A law firm's clients may even direct a firm to hire temporary help or do the hiring themselves, Wolfson said.
"More and more firms are realizing that some very high-quality, experienced legal professionals are out there who have decided to or chosen to do contract work," said Rod Mazure, executive director of the Chicago office of Special Counsel, Inc.
The Minnesota-based Esquire Group, a Special Counsel company, reported that 77 percent of the 200 highest-grossing U.S. law firms say they increased their use of contract lawyers in 2006.
The Esquire Group also said, citing a report by Staffing Industry Analysts, Inc., that temporary legal staffing is expected to increase by 12 percent this year. About one-third of all temporary legal work is for mergers and acquisitions activity, and the remaining two-thirds is attributed to litigation and other legal work. Life of a contract lawyer Sondra Sellars became a contract lawyer for New York law firms and companies in the early ' 90s. She took temporary work when she didn't have permanent employment.
When she moved to Chicago nine years ago, she continued working as a contract lawyer because she didn't know anyone in the legal community and didn't have a book of business to bring with her.
She often does such work as securities, compliance filings, bond financing, and corporate governance.
An in-house assignment usually means a longer assignment -- sometimes longer than a year. Her contract assignments have lasted anywhere from three months to about three years. And she's worked on a project that required as many as 400 contract lawyers.
Contract lawyers should know their way around the different electronic data systems used to collect information, Sellars said. And they should be able to fit in at different types of law firms and companies because they will deal with all kinds of people.
"Contract lawyers are used more and more by the legal community, whether it's in-house or law firms," Sellars said. "Both sides are beginning to understand how we can be helpful to them and how we can bring -- those of us who are senior -- a certain level of expertise to them. A law firm may not want to staff up permanently, but has an emergency need."
Donald Simon was laid off as a full-time, in-house lawyer almost three years ago. While looking for full-time work, he is a contract lawyer and adjunct professor.
He said he's had good and bad experiences as a contract lawyer. He likes not needing to take work home, but the lack of job security can be challenging.
Simon said some law firms and placement agencies are not always forthcoming about what an assignment really entails. They may make guarantees about things like paid overtime and fixed hours to entice the lawyer to take the assignment, but when the job begins, those details can disappear.
If he complains, he said, some agencies say, "If you don't like it, you can quit, because I have 200 or 300 lawyers chomping at the bit for your job."
Law firm partners usually treat contract lawyers with respect, but the associates who they directly work with do not always show the same level of civility, Simon said. Some firms will buy them lunch, but he heard of one firm that required all its contract lawyers to use the bathroom at the same time.
Most of his assignments last anywhere from two to six months, but contract jobs have taken him to places like Belgium and Phoenix, where he has worked for an extended amount of time.
Contract lawyers develop a bond with each other, he said. They share job leads, and commiserate about the legal market.
"Nobody aspires to be a contract attorney," he said. "For everyone I know, this is not what they want to do. They all want real jobs and job security.
"The Chicago market is just saturated with lawyers. It's been tough."
Jayme Steele, who has been doing contract work as a paralegal and lawyer for about two years, would like to work full-time as a corporate in-house lawyer. In the meantime, she does temporary work on large-scale litigation.
"When I first graduated, the market wasn't very good, and it continues to be competitive," Steele said. "This is probably more money than I would make starting out at a smaller firm. I haven't been able to find a job I'm interested in. It allows me to continue looking for the perfect job while bringing in money."
She likes getting the chance to meet different people in the field. Steele said that if she worked for a firm full-time she might work on one case for a few years. But with contract work, she participates in many large-scale litigation cases in a short amount of time.
Job flexibility depends on the project, with some assignments requiring defined schedules, and others not, Reichard said.
A few law firms have said the project will last a few months, but then weeks into the job a contract lawyer learns, without advance notice, that his or her services are no longer needed, he said.
"You don't know when and where your next paycheck may come from," he said. "Lately there are a lot of small projects that may last two or three weeks. There is no continuity. Every few weeks you are scrambling and competing for jobs with hundreds of people."
Law firms rarely hire contract lawyers for full-time positions -- unless they have a connection, he said. One contract lawyer Reichard knows sat near a partner who shared a passion for the White Sox. Reichard said he believes their bonding over the Sox was a main reason the contract lawyer was hired a year or two later.
Marissa Brinkley began doing temporary work in St. Louis. About three years ago, Holland & Knight hired her as a contract lawyer with employee status, which meant she received benefits and did withholdings but was only employed for the duration of the project. After accepting the assignment, she moved to Chicago with her husband. Her initial intention when she came to the firm was not to be hired full-time.
"I would just really say my goal was coming back to Chicago and working in transactional law," Brinkley said. "I guess you could say another plus is you can try out a firm and see if you like it and also get your foot in the door in a certain practice area."
After working as a contract lawyer for about two-and-a-half years at Holland & Knight, the firm hired her this year as a senior counsel.
A temporary lawyer for about six years, she said contract lawyers do not need to deal with the billable requirements, are often paid well, and can have more freedom than full-time lawyers.
Contract lawyers looking for a permanent position should take the initiative and volunteer for additional work, she said, but if you expect to be hired just because you did a good job -- your hopes could be dashed.
"Some firms think contract lawyers will always be contract lawyers," she said. "They just won't look at you as being a prospective attorney for the firm."
After three years of doing temporary work, Reichard advises contract lawyers to act professionally toward each other because they sometimes work in tight quarters, with 10 to 15 lawyers at one table and mere inches of personal space.
And he advises law firms to keep a tally of the good and bad contract lawyers, because some of the unskilled ones consistently get hired. This can give all contract lawyers a bad name. Filling a need Before a law firm employs contract lawyers, it should talk with its clients to make sure they approve of using them, said James T. Mayer, a partner and deputy section leader of the real estate section at Holland & Knight.
A law firm must look at the quality of each person they hire for an assignment, Mayer said.
It must also strategically determine how many people to hire for an assignment, which can be difficult to gauge, he said. On a larger project, Mayer may initially hire fewer people because it can be easier to hire additional contract lawyers later on.
He advises law firms to be clear with their expectations, such as what skills are needed.
Temporary work gives lawyers a chance to get their foot in the door and potentially be hired, he said, but it can also be disheartening, because they receive no guarantees of permanent employment.
"I think it is a trend and I think the use will become greater," Mayer said. "I think people are getting more strict about hiring needs, and you do not want to hire people if you do not have the work for them on a long-term basis. If you have a true need, but certainly don't have enough work to keep them busy, these people fill a vital role."
Biederman, from Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, said he's heard of large clients demanding that a firm hire contract lawyers because they do not want to pay the cost of using full-time lawyers for the entire project.
Client pressures to manage assignments more cost-effectively, and lawyers searching for different lifestyles can fuel the trend of using contract lawyers, he said.
Some firms will hire a group of lawyers full-time to handle a deal, and when the deal dies, they fire the lawyers because they do not have enough work for them, said Bryan I. Schwartz, chairman of Levenfeld Pearlstein. His firm would rather hire contract lawyers to fill a temporary need.
"It is a tough sell within the firm," Schwartz said. "Full-time lawyers don't like [the use of contract lawyers] that much. From a management standpoint, it really makes a lot of sense."
Smaller firms often use contract lawyers for their routine work rather than for more sophisticated jobs so they can price that work at a lower rate, Schwartz said. Unfortunately, many contract lawyers would rather use their talent to do more sophisticated work, he said.
Everyone's expectations must be clear, he said.
"My conclusion is both parties are pretty unhappy about what is going on," Schwartz said."Contract lawyers feel overworked for what they are being paid to do and feel underappreciated. And law firms feel pretty unhappy with people who are not in sync with respect to each party's expectations."
