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Companies Turn to Outside Counsel for Rising Caseloads

October 2007 (SmartPros) — Corporate lawyers are calling in reinforcements to tackle rising caseloads, a new survey suggests. Nearly half (45 percent) of attorneys polled said their legal departments have increased their use of outside counsel in the last 12 months, while only 12 percent said levels have decreased.

Litigation support topped the list of reasons corporations recruit outside counsel, followed by compliance and regulatory matters, and patent issues.

The survey by Robert Half Legal asked, "Has your corporate legal department increased or decreased its work with outside counsel during the last 12 months?" Their responses

Increased - 45%
Decreased - 12%
No change - 39%
Don't know - 4%

Lawyers also were asked, "What types of projects, if any, are you most likely to assign to outside counsel?" Their responses:*

Litigation - 66%
Compliance and regulatory matters - 16%
Patent issues - 13%
Electronic discovery - 9%
Mergers and/or acquisitions - 3%
Other - 5%
None/do not use outside counsel - 4%
Don't know - 1%

*Respondents were allowed more than one answer.

"Corporate legal departments are looking to outside counsel as they continue to face resource and staffing constraints," said Charles Volkert, executive director of Robert Half Legal. "With the growth of litigation caseloads and ever more complex regulatory and compliance requirements, outside support can play a pivotal role in helping busy legal departments and companies meet their business needs."

Volkert added that in addition to outside counsel, corporate legal departments are turning to project attorneys for assistance with large discovery requests and document reviews, and to provide specialized legal knowledge not available in-house.