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City solicitor warns of rising outside‑counsel costs, legal‑subscription needs and environmental litigation exposure
Summary
City Solicitor Eric Jakes told the council the solicitor’s office is seeing growing outside‑counsel costs, pressure to restore legal research subscriptions and intensive environmental and cleanup litigation (including AVX and a water‑treatment plant dispute) that will continue to demand resources.
City Solicitor Eric Jakes told councilors on May 27 that the solicitor’s office has handled large caseloads and faces rising costs for outside counsel and legal research subscriptions. Jakes said the office received 804 public‑records requests through the fiscal year to date and has handled hundreds of contracts, change orders and RFP reviews.
“We have received 804 public records requests,” Jakes said, citing the time burden and noting the office’s average response time. He asked the council to restore funding for legal research subscriptions such as Westlaw and Lexis, saying subscription inflation and higher vendor prices have strained the office’s budget.
Jakes highlighted work that will continue to demand outside counsel and staff time, including litigation tied to long‑running environmental contamination sites. He described disputes involving the AVX/AVX‑branded site and the Hathaway Boulevard water‑treatment plant, and said those matters could require expensive litigation or remediation work. “We are spending an inordinate amount of time with the EPA dealing with a facility that is over 30 years old and is not functioning as it was originally intended,” Jakes said.
Councilors raised concerns about the volume and cost of outside counsel, particularly labor and environmental specialty work. Jakes provided a breakdown in open session of which outside firms handled which matters and said some work—grievances, arbitrations, and other labor matters—had shifted in house but still require firm support for complex cases. He also detailed changes in workers’‑compensation fees at the Department of Industrial Accidents and asked the council to restore a previously cut workers’‑compensation budget line from $7,000 back toward $15,000 to cover mandatory DIA conference fees.
Ending: The solicitor asked the council for modest restorations to cover subscription inflation and new DIA fees and to continue reviewing outside‑counsel expenditures; councilors asked for a clearer, itemized breakdown of outside firms and costs.
