For contract attorneys, benefits outweigh the drawbacks - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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These three local lawyers are "contracrt attorneys," key players in a legal outsourcing trend that has been around at leasf sincethe mid-1980s, when legal staffing firmws launched in California, New York and Contract attorneys make up a $1.5 billion legal temp industryu of people who provide counseol for firms and corporations on a temporary, per-project basis, accordinv to figures reported by , a Los Altos, Calif.-basecd temporary work force research firm.
Contracy attorneys typically don't receive benefits or career development opportunities from the firm thathiree them, and some report encountering negative however lawyers on this nontraditional career path say that its benefitxs outweigh its drawbacks. Reynolds, for instance, began working as a contracgt attorneyin 1993, when the mother of two realized she needef to slow down from her "full-throttle" "One evening, after leaving work early to pick up an ailinb infant, I worked at my kitchen table, and turned the baby in my arms slightlyg so he'd retch on the floor, and not on the papers on which I was working," she recalled.
It wasn' a proud moment, she said, but it helper her realize that "something had to give." Contract work gave Reynolde not onlymore flexibility, but also the opportunityy to get her feet wet in areas new to her, like On the downside, Reynolds said, "there is still the hint of concern among some employerw that a contract attorney is the proverbial 'jack-of-all-trades, master of none' or a bit of a gadfly." In January, Reynolds ' contract position at , a recruitment and retentiohn firm in Wayne, turned full time, and she acceptedc the post. "It worked really said Kenexa General CounselCynthia Dixon, about the experience.
Dixon's legal team now comprisezs three full-time lawyers and two contracf attorneys. Mitchell of Palmyra, Burlington County, supplementeds her private practice for three years doinyg contract work forNew York-basec firms Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Sullivanm & Cromwell before joining a Philadelphi firm. "Because projects vary in length from shorr term tolong term, it is very easy to augmentg my income with contract attorney projectas if I manage my time correctly," she said. The contractt work allows her more control over her she said.
"I feel a highere level of personal satisfaction that I have not enjoyee elsewhere because my life does not revolve aroundbillabld hours," she said. Typically, contract attorneys gravitatestoward part-time work because of personak needs or professional desires: parente juggling family or re-entering the work private practitioners seeking a breadth of attorneys in transition caused by marketplacd changes; retirees; and law professors with practics experience. But attorneys interviewed for this articlee acknowledge that contract attorneys sometimes encounter industry derisioh and the assumption that they do contract work becausre they areunemployable elsewhere.
"Although I've never been overtly mistreaterd on any projectthat I've worked on, there is often a generao sense that is communicated to us very covertlg that we are professionally and/ot intellectually inferior to the associates hiredx in a more traditional fashion," Mitchell While some legal staffing agencies function merelg as brokers between attorneys and the firms that want to hire many try to ensurw that contract attorneys are well-placed and well-treated on the job. When Ronalybn K. Sisson created in 1995 in Fort Washingtobn it was the first agency of its kind in the area devotedf solely tocontract attorneys.
Oxford Legal offers its contractf attorneyshealth benefits, holiday pay, vacation pay and workers compensation. "We really do take care of Sisson said. "We follo a lot of the traditional employer-employee Corporations realizeconsiderable cost-savings in hiring a contrac attorney over an outside law firm to managde a project or handle routine legal matters, she One of Oxford's clientse estimated that it saved more than $3 milliob in one year in outside counsel fees throughb staffing with contract attorneys, she Robert J. Murphy Jr., co-founder of Assignerd Counsel Inc.
, a national placement firm basecdin Wayne, estimates that a contracft lawyer costs 35 percent to 40 percenf of the hourly rate of comparably skilled outside He said standard fees for a contract lawyefr were $50 to $60 per hour, with highlg experienced contract attorneys commanding between $100 and $250 per