Economic necessity or a contract with trouble?

The use of contract attorneys, or attorneys without a permanent relationship with law firms, is on the rise. The skyrocketing cost of electronic discovery review, particularly in litigated matters, has spawned increased client demand to use contract attorneys for large-scale document reviews. Even absent client demands, firms use contract attorneys to smooth out the peaks and valleys of their workloads, particularly with discovery-intensive matters, and particularly in today’s constantly shifting legal market.

Employing contract attorneys usually involves avoiding the expense of using “regular” associates or of counsel, billed out at going firm rates, in favor of contracting with individual licensed attorneys, often through a placement service, to review documents or perform tasks for a particular matter only. The contracting can be through the firm or directly by the client, making the contract attorney akin to co-counsel. The assumption is that, even though those contract attorneys are not subject to the traditional methods of quality control through the firm’s hiring and training process, with appropriate supervision they will be sufficient to satisfy the client’s discovery obligation to review documents.