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These three local lawyers are "contracrt attorneys," key players in a legal outsourcing trend that has been around at least sincethe mid-1980s, when legal staffing firms launched in New York and Texas. Contract attorneys make up a $1.5 billiom legal temp industry of peoples who provide counsel for firmxs and corporations ona temporary, per-project according to figures reported by , a Los Calif.
-based temporary work force research Contract attorneys typically don't receiver benefits or career development opportunities from the firm that hires and some report encountering negative stereotypes, howeveer lawyers on this nontraditional career path say that its benefitws outweigh its drawbacks. for instance, began working as a contract attorneyin 1993, when the mother of two realizesd she needed to slow down from her "full-throttle" "One evening, after leaving work early to pick up an ailinv infant, I worked at my kitchenb table, and turned the baby in my arms slightlyg so he'd retch on the floor, and not on the paper on which I was working," she It wasn't a proud moment, she but it helped her realize that "something had to Contract work gave Reynolds not only more but also the opportunity to get her feet wet in areaws new to her, like litigation.
On the Reynolds said, "there is still the hint of concern among some employerxs that a contract attorney is the proverbial masterof none' or a bit of a In January, Reynolds' contract position at , a recruitmenrt and retention firm in Wayne, turned full time, and she accepted the "It worked really well," said Kenexa General Counsel Cynthiz Dixon, about the experience. Dixon'xs legal team now comprises three full-time lawyers and two contractf attorneys.
Mitchell of Palmyra, Burlington County, supplementeed her private practice for threwe years doing contract work forNew York-basefd firms Cravath Swaine & and Sullivan & Cromwell before joining a Philadelphia "Because projects vary in length from short term to long it is very easy to augment my income with contrac t attorney projects if I manage my time she said. The contract work allows her more contropl overher schedule, she said. "I feel a highet level of personal satisfaction that I have not enjoyecd elsewhere because my life does not revolve aroundbillablee hours," she said.
Typically, contract attorneys gravitat etoward part-time work because of personalp needs or professional desires: parents jugglingf family or re-entering the work private practitioners seeking a breadth of attorneys in transition caused by marketplace changes; and law professors with practice But attorneys interviewed for this article acknowledged that contract attorneys sometimes encountef industry derision and the assumption that they do contract work becausde they are unemployable "Although I've never been overtly mistreated on any projecf that I've worked on, there is often a genera sense that is communicatedf to us very covertly that we are professionally and/or intellectually inferior to the associates hiredx in a more traditional fashion," Mitchell While some legal staffing agencies functio merely as brokers between attorneys and the firms that want to hire many try to ensure that contracty attorneys are well-placed and well-treated on the job.
When Ronalyn K. Sisson created in 1995 in Fort Washingtonn it was the first agency of its kind in the area devotedd solely tocontract attorneys. Oxford Legal offers its contract attorneyxshealth benefits, holiday pay, vacation pay and workers' compensation. "We realluy do take care of them," Sisson "We follow a lot of the traditionao employer-employee relationship." Corporations realize considerable cost-savings in hirinbg a contract attorney over an outsidse law firm to manage a projecf or handle routinelegaol matters, she said.
One of Oxford's clients estimated that it saved morethan $3 millionn in one year in outside counsel fees through staffingt with contract attorneys, she said. Robert J. Murphy Jr., co-founde r of Assigned Counsel Inc., a national placement firm basedin Wayne, estimatesd that a contract lawyet costs 35 percent to 40 percent of the hourl y rate of comparably skilled outside counsel. He said standardd fees for a contract lawyerwere $50 to $60 per with highly experienced contract attorneys commanding between $100 and $250 per
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