Work for ‘Temps’ : Part-Time Law Finds a Market
Sally North felt so burned out after several years with a poverty law office that she wanted a sabbatical while deciding whether to continue practicing law.
Kenneth E. Chyten left a San Francisco law firm for a Los Angeles real estate job that fell through and decided to set up a law practice here but lacked clients.
Diane Berley had a baby and no longer wanted to work 60 hours a week or commute from Woodland Hills to a downtown law firm.
They all wanted temporary work.
Sole practitioner LeAnne Maillian had plenty of clients and decided it was time to quit working seven days a week, but she couldn’t provide office space or steady work for a full-time associate.
Jack White, a partner in the 45-lawyer firm of Hill, Farrer and Burrill, needed an extra lawyer in a hurry when the firm took over a tax fraud case nearing trial.
They needed temporary workers.
Enter the legal matchmakers.
In the last couple of years, a handful of business-oriented lawyers and law-oriented businessmen in major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York, have set up small placement services for lawyers much like the agencies that provide temporary secretaries or housekeepers.
“There is a real need for these services, because there are a lot of good, competent lawyers out there who just can’t work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and not just women with kids,” said Berley. “And a lot of firms that can’t afford another associate need the work done.”
Specialty Services
The three services in the new field in the Los Angeles area share some of the same “temps.” But owners say each service has its own specialties, which reduces competition.
- Rent-a-Lawyer, formerly known as Attorney Appearance Group and now owned by sole practitioner Daniel Bernath and his wife, Paula, who operates the service from their home, caters to lawyers who want to hire temps for short-term work such as brief court hearings or deposition sessions. Paula Bernath handles the placement by telephone for a negotiated commission, with her husband taking some of the temporary work to fill in gaps in his own practice.
- Counsel Pro Tem, owned by attorney Carol Agate, who works two days a week as a juvenile traffic court referee and spends the remainder of her time operating the service from her condominium, provides all lawyer services from research and drafting to courtroom litigation but does it by selling a $120-a-year updated list of temps she has screened. The hiring attorney receives the temp’s phone number from Agate, calls the temp directly and negotiates a fee.
- Of Counsel, run by John Meek, a Stanford economics graduate and businessman, places temps who want longer assignments or who specialize in certain areas of law, charging $10 of each billable hour the temp works or 20% of a negotiated fee. Like the Bernaths, Meek collects the money from the hiring lawyer, takes his commission and pays the temp.
The more than 200 temps listed by the three services, agree Bernath, Agate and Meek, cannot be stereotyped. They range from recent law school graduates awaiting results of Bar exams to retired corporate lawyers, and include women with small children, lawyers who just want a little time off, and even a few attorneys trying to break into acting or screen writing.
Most temps, who make from $35 to $75 an hour, with $40 the typical rate, are lawyers with a few years’ experience who have left law firms and are trying to establish new offices as sole practitioners.
“This service gives attorneys an opportunity to fill up their dance cards,” said Chyten, the former San Francisco lawyer relocating here. “Of Counsel was a foot in the door of the L.A. legal market for me.”
Chyten, who specializes in complex business litigation, was hired as a temp to help a sole practitioner defend a civil bank fraud case in San Diego and wound up handling the monthlong trial alone because the attorney had an illness in the family. He won.
“I think of myself as kind of a trouble-shooter,” Chyten said. “I kind of like stepping into the fire.”
Although the temps vary in their personal circumstances, the hiring attorneys are more easily categorized. Chiefly, Agate and Bernath agree, they are sole practitioners or two-lawyer offices who need help during the feast but not the famine of the volatile law business.
“We hire temps through Carol’s Counsel Pro Tem when we just need some emergency help or if we need some expertise in, say bankruptcy or tax law,” said Lakewood attorney H. Brooks Cope, who practices with one associate. “It’s what we used to do through contacts--asking some attorney you knew if he could help out--or through Bar associations.”
Meek agrees that smaller law offices are his best customers, but he also cultivates mid-size firms like White’s, with 45 lawyers.
Absolutely Swamped
“There are times no matter how many attorneys you have that you have so much work in house that everybody is absolutely swamped,” White said. “You either turn work away, which nobody wants to do, or hire another full-time employee, which we are reluctant to do because later on we may not have enough work for that employee.
“We relied on Of Counsel’s screening. We still interviewed the two (temps) we’ve hired, but we hired them on the spot,” he said. “This just shortens the process for us.”
The one potential market segment that the temp services have not cracked is big firms, who do call personnel agencies for temporary office help or paralegals.
“With as many lawyers as we have, we are much better able to handle the peaks and valleys of our legal needs,” said James F. McIntosh, executive director of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, one of Los Angeles’ five largest firms with 256 lawyers. “Occasionally we have hired lawyers on contract for a temporary position. But fortunately we have a lot of people knocking on our door, and some are willing to accept work knowing it isn’t permanent.”
The lawyers who do hire temps consider the arrangement highly cost effective because they do not have to pay for a bigger office (temps may work in a law library, a courtroom, at home or at a makeshift desk) or pay fringe benefits.
The hiring lawyers tend to think of the temps as associates (permanent attorney employees) and usually supervise their work much as a partner would supervise a newly hired lawyer in a large firm.
Although the American Bar Assn. has begun to look at ethical questions involving temporary lawyers, temps and those who hire them say no real problems exist.
The ABA’s main question relates to any possible conflict of interest for a temp who could conceivably work, at different times, for lawyers on both sides of a case.
“Every attorney has a duty to his client to determine whether he has a conflict of interest,” said Chyten. “If I think there is any potential conflict at all, I will not take the case.”
Alert to Conflicts
White said that conflict is something hiring lawyers must watch for, but that it can be a problem with full-time employees, too, as attorneys move from firm to firm.
“I know who I have done work for,” said Berley, a temp who worked for law firms before her baby was born. “There is less chance of me running into a conflict than somebody in a 200-attorney firm with a massive client list where the attorneys don’t know each other.”
Another question is whether a part-time attorney would keep every client’s matters confidential, moving so frequently to new clients and cases.
“I would think the attorney-client privilege would remain in effect even if the (temporary) attorney moves on,” said White of the mid-size firm. “That could be a problem for a firm because it’s harder to enforce when somebody leaves. But it would be no different than when an associate leaves.”
Ethical Consideration
As for whether a lawyer hired for his expertise can ethically hand off work to a temp, lawyers on both sides say the situation is no different than a partner assigning certain legal tasks to the young associate or paralegal in the big law firm or a plumber delegating tasks to his apprentice.
“The way most law firms are set up, a client would have to be very naive to think that one lawyer will be doing all the work,” said North, a temp who works through Rent-a-Lawyer. “Those kinds of days seem to be fading away.”
Maillian, past chairman of the State Bar’s Law and Management Section and current chairman of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s Client Relations Committee, said clients are not being hoodwinked because standard retainer agreements state that the attorney may hire or associate in another attorney if necessary to deal with the case.
Delighted With Success
“The client has every right to know who is working on their case,” she said, “and to meet with that person.”
Whether companies providing legal temps will proliferate or expand like those providing office workers is uncertain, although Agate envisions a national chain. But so far the growing number of lawyers who want a little or a lot of work on a case-by-case basis are delighted that the new businesses are succeeding.
“For people who are very independent and like to be their own boss,” said North, who has decided to remain in the practice of law, “this is perfect. Our expenses are minimal and we make good rates.”
