"I felt if I went around flashing my credentials, I could erase this stigma," explained Guyol, a former high-powered Wall Street attorney.

After graduating from the University of Southern California Law School, Guyol spent five years working for a large New York firm and five more years with firms in Portland, Ore. But 10 years after becoming a lawyer, she was so dissatisfied with the internal politics of law firms that she considered giving up the profession entirely.

After she began "contract lawyering" in the fall of 1992, however, she discovered that the legal profession wasn't the problem at all; it was law firm life she didn't like.

"I really thought that I just didn't like being a lawyer. Then I found once I got outside the firm and was my own boss, I liked it just fine," Guyol said. "I like having the intellectual side of the work divorced from firm politics."

Since then, Guyol has not only adapted to the temp lawyer lifestyle, but also become an expert in contract lawyering. Co-author of "The Complete Guide to Contract Lawyering," Guyol advises other attorneys interested in hiring or becoming a contract lawyer.

The stigma once associated with contract lawyering - also known as "temp lawyering" - is gone, she said.

"People who are choosing alternative ways to practice law are more accepted," she said.

Many small law firms are using contract lawyers as a way to take on big projects without adding a permanent associate. Some use contract lawyers with specialized expertise in practice areas outside their own to give clients additional services that they otherwise couldn't provide.

Two years ago, Sean Ploen co-founded a two-lawyer firm in Boston that specializes in business and commercial law. He said hiring contract lawyers has helped the firm navigate its early growth period.

Within the first four months of opening, Ploen's firm began hiring outside attorneys on a contractual basis. In total, the firm has used about 10 contract attorneys, including a labor and employment specialist, a tax specialist and a trusts and estates specialist.

"I think the traditional path is to refer out clients who have problems outside of the areas in which you typically work," Ploen said. "But there is also a middle ground here of retaining control over the work while using a specialist."

Stigma Erased
Once looked down on as a low-wage, low-quality substitute for work provided by an attorney at a law firm, temp lawyering has gained respectability both among those who do it for a living and the lawyers who hire them.

Temp lawyering started in the mid-1980s because of a glut of recent law school graduates who were willing to work temporarily while searching for permanent law firm positions.

Still a reliable source of short-term employment for recent law school graduates, the industry now boasts a large number of experienced lawyers who have been laid off during the recession, women with young children who want flexible schedules, lawyers moonlighting in alternative careers as writers, musicians or artists, and free spirits - such as Guyol - who don't want to be bound to one firm.

"There are plenty of people like me who do it because they want to do other things with their life than bill a gazillion hours and make a ton of money," Guyol said.

"It's a totally accepted concept now," agreed Jay Horowitz, chief executive of Strategic Workforce Solutions and co-founder of its legal division, Strategic Legal Solutions, a New York-based legal staffing firm.

Precise figures on the number of lawyers working as contract lawyers are hard to come by. But John Marshall, president of Special Counsel, a legal staffing company based in Jacksonville, Fla., estimates there are "tens of thousands" of temp lawyers nationwide.

Horowitz, who has been in the legal staffing business since 1995, said when he first started placing temp lawyers, law firm clients were "very concerned about what corporate legal departments would think."

"Now, it's the other spectrum," he said. "Clients use us because their corporate clients insist or highly suggest. They still want their law firms for expertise, but for certain functions they realize they can get cost-effective solutions and results [from temp attorneys]."

Even major corporations, which once spurned the use of temp lawyers as sub-par legal help, are bullish on the concept.

So far, lawyers from 160 companies have journeyed to E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.'s headquarters in Wilmington, Del., to learn about the chemical giant's new legal model. The company, which praises the model as a cure-all for soaring legal costs, sends a portion of its legal work to temporary and freelance lawyers. In 2002, lawyers working at a temporary agency handled uncomplicated assignments such as witness interviews, exhibit collection and document review, and helped the company trim its legal bills by $8.8 million.

Some companies even outsource relatively simple legal tasks, such as transcriptions and basic patent research, to temp agencies in foreign countries, such as India. This is a particularly economical alternative, since pay scales abroad are much lower.

Ethical And Liability Concerns
"The Complete Guide To Contract Lawyering," which Guyol co-authored with the late Deborah Arron, notes that issues of client confidentiality, conflicts of interest, disclosure and fee splitting apply to all contract lawyers. With contract lawyers hired through agencies, the biggest controversy has been whether payments to an agency constitute a division of fees with non-lawyers.

The American Bar Association has ruled that a fee paid to an agency is not a legal fee, but instead compensation for locating, recruiting, screening and placing the lawyer. But several states, including California and New Hampshire, either suggest or require that the agency be paid separately.

There are also ethical considerations related to hiring temp attorneys.

"We have to be careful in those initial conversations before the attorneys are engaged, and wade through the waters as to potential conflicts and not breaking the client privilege," Ploen explained.

Ploen, who does his own hiring instead of going through an agency, said that despite the extra time and effort it takes to work out such arrangements, using contract lawyers has been a boon for his firm.

"For a law firm that's two years old, we've been pleased at how this arrangement has worked - making use of temp and contract attorneys," Ploen said. "To the extent we can defer doing a permanent full time [hire], we will."

Ploen declined to discuss his fee arrangements with temp attorneys, but said he hires specialists whose fees are well above those that would be paid to a recent law school grad.

If it's an area of law outside of his practice area, figuring out how much time to assign a temp attorney to a project can be challenging, Ploen said. In those instances, Ploen said he tries to get a sense from the temp attorney of how much time a particular pleading might take to research and draft before he actually assigns a deadline.

Typically, the contract lawyers provide research and drafting work. Eschewing a legal services staffing agency, Ploen and his partner rely on their network of attorney friends and former law school classmates in Boston to recommend lawyers looking for assignments.

Often, Ploen said, the temp attorneys they hire are solo practitioners looking for extra work during slow periods.

"Sometimes they will have expertise that we don't," Ploen said. "They're willing to do it because it essentially fills [work] gaps, solidifies their relationship with us and exposes them to people they otherwise might not have contact with."

Cost Savings
Marshall, the head of Special Counsel, estimates savings to law firms range from 30 percent to 50 percent in benefits and other costs.

Fees paid to temp attorneys also vary, but generally are less than half of what a law firm would bill a client for a staff attorney.

Horowitz said when he gives temp assignments to senior-level attorneys used to billing $300 to $500 an hour, he explains "market realities" to them, and tells them they may be paid $70 to $100 an hour.

"If you multiply that by the number of hours in a week or a month, it's certainly a fine segue into a permanent job," Horowitz commented.

As the economy picks up, he said, law firms that have been hesitant about rebuilding their staffs are hiring temporary lawyers as a way to see if the firm has a need for a permanent position and to check out the attorney.

"We're seeing a lot of temp to perm as a way of testing the need," Horowitz said.

Placements of attorneys for both temporary and permanent positions declined at the beginning of the recession, but "are really increasing," according to Horowitz.

Marshall said that regardless of the economy, temp lawyering is here to stay.

"It is a growing industry," he said. "It's cost-effective, primarily because lawyers are seeking ways to reduce their expenses and maximize their own profits, while also minimizing costs charged to their clients."

But perhaps the biggest reason for the success of the temp lawyer industry comes not from law firms, but from their clients.

"Clients are putting pressure on their lawyers to save money," Marshall said.

Flexible Schedule
For Guyol, who still works as a contract lawyer, the best part of the arrangement is the freedom to set her own schedule.

Lawyers who temp for a big firm are usually assigned space at the firm's offices. Some lawyers who have made contract lawyering their careers even have their own offices, which they use as a base of operations for all their assignments. Guyol said that because most of her assignments are for small-firm lawyers who are squeezed for office space, she usually works at home - an arrangement she said is both a blessing and a curse.

But working at home requires a discipline that Guyol admitted can be challenging. A self-described procrastinator, Guyol tends to put off assignments until her deadline is looming.

"Sometimes it's hard," she said. "I can get away with putting something off."

On the other hand, because she sets her own hours, Guyol can get up early, get her work done and then run errands or take an early lunch while other lawyers are trapped in their offices.

"I like to work early in the morning," she said. "That's my most productive time of day."

Guyol works for several small Oregon firms on a regular basis each month, as well as for several others on an occasional basis. Most of her work involves business litigation research and brief-writing.

While some of her assignments are quick jobs that take less than 10 hours and others take up to 60 hours, a typical assignment, to write a complicated summary judgment motion or brief, usually requires 20 to 30 hours, she said.

She also teaches creative writing to a local senior citizens group, works on her own memoir and essay writing, and maintains a small estate planning practice.

"I'm suited to this by temperament and my life choices," Guyol said.

This article has been reprinted with the permission of Lawyers Weekly USA, the national newspaper for small law firms. To subscribe, please visit www.lawyersweeklyusa.com or call (800) 451-9998.

Copyright 2004 Lawyers Weekly USA