Privately held companies in need of legal advice on an ongoing basis to review contracts, mergers and acquisitions and other matters now have a new option – temporary legal service.
Contract Counsel Solutions (CCS) began serving clients on Feb. 1. The West Allis company serves two types of corporate clients: companies that need an attorney on staff but cannot afford to pay for one because they’re not large enough yet; and those that need an additional attorney to handle a special matter on a temporary basis.
“The first is companies that do not have a legal staff but have ongoing legal needs,” said Keith Butler, president of CCS. “That can be employment law, contracts, compliance work, risk avoidance, real estate business transactions, mergers and acquisitions, commercial transaction law and even managing outside legal counsel when necessary.”
CCS attorneys also can function to help augment an existing legal team, Butler said.
“You might have one to three attorneys, but you might be going through an acquisition or anything that you would refer to an outside counsel. (With CCS) you can now handle it in-house on a more cost-effective basis.”
Contract Counsel Solutions (CCS) is a subsidiary of Personnel Specialists Ltd., a West Allis staffing firm. Personnel Specialists also has another division named Legal Placement Services that provides temporary, direct hire and temporary to permanent employees to law firms.
Several of Legal Placement Services and Personnel Specialists’ clients requested that the companies find them part-time or temporary attorneys, said Joseph Haas, vice president of business development with Legal Placement Services.
“It was developed off of the demands of our clients,” he said. “When your clients are bringing something to you, it makes your job that much easier. The demand is out there. We plan to capitalize on it.”
CCS is the only Milwaukee-area firm that offers part-time and temporary attorneys, Butler said. However, there are many companies that offer similar services around the country.
“This model is being done in every major city, but no one was doing it in Milwaukee,” said George Bodganovich, chairman and chief executive officer of Personnel Specialists.
Butler is CCS’ only full-time employee. The company’s offices are located in Personnel Specialists and Legal Placement Services’ West Allis headquarters, and the employees of its parent company provide back-office support.
When they launched CCS, Butler and Bogdanovich formed relationships with a handful of attorneys who were interested in doing part-time and temporary work for clients. Many of those attorneys are in their 50s and have worked in large law firms for decades.
“Some of the best guys are coming out of large firms,” Haas said. “These are good attorneys who don’t want to go out and find work. And that’s where we can fit in.”
In addition to older attorneys who might be looking to scale back, CCS also has arrangements with several female attorneys with young children, who do not want to work full-time but are interested in 20 to 30 hours per week.
“We have hundreds of top-notch attorneys, who for a wide variety of reasons, the current model doesn’t work for,” Haas said. “And this is an alternative that can be a complete compliment to the current system.”
“We’ve got resumes from attorneys with 20 to 30 years of experience in New York, Illinois and Florida that are enthusiastic and will relocate to Milwaukee,” Butler said.
Because their clients are not paying for a large support staff and overhead costs, CCS’ attorneys charge $150 per hour and less, depending upon experience and area of expertise, Butler said. Many prominent Milwaukee-area law firms charge $350 to $500 per hour for legal services, he said.
“(Clients) are not paying for a 20-story office building with a view of Lake Michigan, a staff of paralegals, IT people and office managers,” he said. “The overhead is staggering.
We cut out the overhead. Our guy shows up and turns on the light in his office.”
While CCS has only officially been in business since Feb. 1, it has already placed several attorneys. The firm recently placed a temporary attorney with a large manufacturing company that needed a lawyer to work 40 hours per week, Butler said.
“That could turn into a permanent hire position,” he said.
Part of CCS’ business plan is trying to teach business owners that they need to have an ongoing relationship with an attorney, even if they can’t afford to hire general counsel.
“The cost of not having a legal team is more now,” Haas said. “Being reactive is a lot more expensive than being proactive. The need (for CCS) is really generated off of the corporate legal landscape. Liability is huge. Contracts are huge. People are spending more time talking about the bridges ahead, and corporations are forced to take a different look at their legal costs.”
Contract Counsel Solutions
Address: 6737 W. Washington St., West Allis
Industry: Part-time and temporary attorneys
Corporate parent: Personnel Specialists Ltd.
Web site: www.contractcounselsolutions.com
