2006-11-18LSRC2.rpt - Laserfiche WebLink

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The success of Brookline’s in-house counsel approach depends on being able to sustain a large enough in-house legal department to provide the full range of expertise required. In Brookline’s case, the counsel’s office employs four full-time attorneys plus two paralegals. Their sense is that the minimum adequate size for an in-house counsel office would be about three full-time lawyers with appropriate supporting personnel. Brookline is a substantially larger community than Lexington, and it is less than clear whether our size would support a sufficient sized staff. It also appears that the in-house model was the most expensive of the models we considered, although it is difficult to make solid comparisons, given variations in community size, legal needs, and choices about which services to secure from primary town counsel. (In Brookline’s case, comparisons are further complicated by the fact that Brookline is self-insured for tort claims and property losses, and a substantial portion of the legal department’s time is devoted to managing such claims.) Nonetheless, the in-house model does provide Brookline with the advantages of day-to-day involvement of legal staff in a wide range of town decision-making and from the ability to undertake (or to threaten) litigation without incurring added municipal costs. On the other hand, some committee members had questions and concerns about the degree of sophistication and expertise that a four-person in-house staff could provide to the Town. Finally, were this model to be of interest, a critical question would be how the Town could effectively make a transition to an in- house operation; it is less than clear that we could find a person with the requisite skills and experience to lead such an operation in the years that it would take to build up a capable in-house team. The pro’s and con’s of the specialized municipal firm model were perhaps the most difficult to assess. As noted, most of what we heard from Burlington was very positive, although it was difficult to assess how much their experience depended on the fact that Burlington was one of Kopelman & Paige’s first clients and that the town has maintained an unusually close relationship, throughout that history, with the senior partner at the firm who has been the town’s lead counsel. The evident virtue of this model is that a large firm specializing in municipal law has a wide range of in-house expertise to address the vast bulk of issues with which Lexington is likely to deal. The correlative concern is that, in a large firm with many dozens of municipal clients, individualized attention to a town’s particular needs may be diminished in favor of application of standardized, “cookie-cutter” solutions. There were also concerns on the part of Committee members about ensuring continuity of services and a centralized overview of the client’s multiple needs and concerns when dealing with a firm with a large and changing staff of lawyers, as well as concerns about whether such a firm would offer the same level of sophistication and creativity as a firm that focused on more individualized and custom-tailored services. At the same time, it should be noted that, at least based on Burlington’s experience, which may be unique in certain respects, this model appeared to be substantially less expensive than the viable alternatives. Finally, the Committee saw a great many benefits to Lexington from the model we are currently using – benefits that largely reflect what the Committee perceives as a very positive relationship with Bill Lahey and the impressive strengths that Anderson & Kreiger offers to the Town, although many of the same benefits were also evidenced in 3