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Town manager presents case for a staff attorney amid rising external legal costs
Summary
Staff recommended adding a staff attorney to handle routine transactional work to reduce reliance on outside firms; commissioners asked for invoice-level breakdowns of legal fees and historic hour/cost buckets before deciding.
Town Manager Malia James outlined a proposed staff attorney position intended to take on day-to-day transactional work (contracts, ordinances and routine legal review) while keeping the contracted town attorney or firm for litigation and specialized matters.
Malia said the town has relied on outside counsel historically and that legal services costs have risen; she argued a staff attorney could provide consistent, on-the-ground counsel for contract and personnel matters and offset some outside counsel costs. Daniel Peterson (the contracted town attorney) explained that the firm structure provides coverage across specialties but acknowledged more complex litigation and personnel matters have increased demands on legal spending.
Commissioners asked staff to return with breakouts of legal spending by vendor and by activity (personnel, real estate, litigation) for multiple fiscal years and to provide the list of outside attorneys currently working on town matters. Staff committed to pull invoices and provide more detailed fiscal-year comparisons and activity-level hours to help the board evaluate whether a staff attorney would reduce overall costs or simply shift where fees are paid.
