Why does the city hire outside counsel to conduct negotiations, the city legal dept. has over 30 lawyers. Fox 25 will air a story about it at 9 pm tonight.
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Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Why does the city hire outside counsel to conduct negotiations, the city legal dept. has over 30 lawyers. Fox 25 will air a story about it at 9 pm tonight.
Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Who'd they hire?
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
The city often hires outside counsel for specialized cases that require expertise, background, etc. not within its ranks. Examples include the hiring of outside counsel on property acquisitions, civil lawsuits, and yes, labor cases. I suspect that's the answer the city will provide in the Fox 25 story. The city's 30 attorneys are charged with handling everying from reviewing ordinances, handling claims resulting from sewer back-ups, traffic accidents, etc.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
So Steve, your saying that, even though they negotiate with 3 employee associations every year, they don't have any attorneys on staff to handle that type of situation? Sounds to me if they're looking to cut wasteful spending they might want to invest in one or two.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Of course they do. But this is no ordinary negotiation this year, now is it?
(Ladies and gentlemen of OKC Talk, this is a proud week for Steve Lackmeyer. I do believe my online writings have now managed to alienate management and labor at City Hall. Oddly, I'm at peace).
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
That's when you know you are doing something right, the monkeys fling poo at you from both directions...Originally Posted by Steve
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Mike, for clarification purposes. Are you talking about the actual annual negotiations over the CBA, or, are you referring to the current/pending court cases stemming from last years arbitration case?
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I can see the smile on your face from here.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I'm sure it's both.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
You should do it more often. It's often good journalism when they aren't happy.
Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I'm always skeptical about this sort of thing. There was a time, as recently as the late 70s/early 80s that even the Attorney General's office didn't hire outside counsel. I have my sneaking suspicions that these sorts of contract jobs can become more political payback than utilization of some 'unique' expertise.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
And the certainty is based on news reports? confirmation calls? gut check?
Not doubting your certainty, just trying to better understand it, as my initial thoughts were similar to andy's regarding outside counsel.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
If I heard the story on the news right, they will be utilized for regularly scheduled yearly negotiations. Hold on, I'll just grab the paper, maybe their story will clarify it. Hmmm, interesting, doesn't seem to be here. I'm shocked!
Steve, I have to agree with Metro, you know you're doing something right when neither side is completely satisfied. Now, let that attitude spread to the rest of your cohorts and the people of this city would get a much better newspaper.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Midtowner, I truely believe your skepticism is based purely on reality. Case in point. Over the past decade, in six or seven of those years the Firefighters and the City have taken their unresolved contract issues before an arbitration panel for settlement.
The tripartite board as you well know, has 3 members. The Firefighters and the City each have 1 member on the panel to represent and protect each of the parties interest.
The third member of the panel is chosen by mutual agreement between the parties, and serves as the boards chair in a neutral and unbiased capacity.
My point is this, which lends me to believe your skepticism has merit.
In each of the arbitration cases the City has contracted for the services of an outside law firm for it's representation. The majority of the hearings were concluded in less than 2 days. Each of the contracts paid to the private firms for their services cost to the taxpayers 10 to 15 thousand dollars each.
I will concede up front to those who may argue the point that the cost to the taxpayers was a mere drop in the bucket, I agree, it was.
However, as someone who was involved in many of those cases on behalf of the Firefighters, as a taxpayer it makes me wonder why I was paying a private firm for legal services as well as 3 or 4 paid staff attornies to sit in the back of the room in the capacity of casual observers.
For what it is worth, which I know won't be much to you, knowing how you feel about the Firefighters Union, the Firefighters had off-duty, and unpaid brother Firefighters representing their interest and still we were able to prevail more times than not.
Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
If you've ever dealt with big law firms as the little guy (guilty), there's a saying. You've never taken a deposition with an attorney present from the opposing side. That's because there are two or three extra lawyers at everything billing their hourly rates. With institutional or governmental contracts, there's not a lot (if any) oversight, so even if these firms have contracted to bill at reduced rates, they're making up for that by bringing four lawyers when one would be fine.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I understand what your saying about how the billing system operates regarding I & G contracts. I did a quick scan of the Professional Services contract between the City and the law firm of M & T which was approved today by the City Council. The system as you described above is alive and well which will allow it to continue on at taxpayers expense.
However, the 3 or 4 attorneys (as opposed to attornies),( I knew something didn't look quite right) mentioned in my OP were not private sector contract attorneys simply tagging along to boost the billing. No, they were staff attorneys with the City.
City staff attorneys whom I assume lacked the ability to perform the task of a high dollar private attorney. Or for that matter, an off-duty Firefighter. Maybe it's because they're too busy. I'll admit they do handle other legal issues for the City as Steve had previously mentioned. Yet they still found the time to spend the day sitting in the peanut gallary watching how the big boys do it, which was also at the taxpayers expense. But in all fairness, Firefighters do play volleyball at the taxpayers expense.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Don't know any of the city's attys, not pretending to know why they were there in the setting andy described.
On the other hand, I do know a lot of learning can be had, for attys and non-attys alike, by sitting in a peanut gallery.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Thanks for the compliment. Now I'll disappoint you by saying if I were still the City Hall reporter I wouldn't have considered this anymore newsworthy than the other inside baseball that's going on in this whole fight.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
Definitely my favorite two posts on OKCTalk in a long, long while!
And when did OKC become so overpopulated with conspiracy theorists?? <eye roll!>
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
"I'm shocked, shocked to find conspiracy theorists on OKC Talk!"
With all due apologies to Captain Renault
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I don't know all of them, but I do know a few of them. Although I may have problem with a couple of them over various Labor-Management issues, so what, I'm quite sure they would say the same about me, it's the nature of the bussiness. Everyone has a job to do on behalf of their clients, including Union Officers
As attorneys I consider them to be very competent and skilled in their craft. From a personal point of view they're good people, and dedicated employees doing their job to the best of their abilities, no different than the other 4,000 or so employees of the City.
I agree with your point about learning by observation, however, I'm quite sure any of them are very capable and would to a good job representing the City in the capacity of it's interest arbitrator. Considering anyone of them could handle the task, and some of them have the time to sit and watch, then why are we paying extra for outside legal council?
Hiring an outside firm to act as an interest is one thing, but now, hiring the firm to now handle negotiations, besides a waste of money if I were staff I would consider this action by the Manager and Council to be a slap in the face.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I have to disagree on this one, Labor Law is a very specialized field and any professional would not take this as an insult, most likely they would take this as an opportunity to learn.
Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I have to agree. I did employment law for years and then went to work for the feds doing, in large part, labor law. It was a real learning curve and quite different than what I had done, before.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I read the article in the paper today. Seems to me this is a strategy to attempt to make things more civil. I notice that the action is taken by the City which makes me think more highly of them. Obviously there is extreme bitterness, distrust, and vengeance seeking on the part of some of the parties on both sides.
This change may not help but it is apparent the current methodology is ineffective and doomed to fail from the outset. Sometimes just changing anything helps and I hope that this change can at least help.
Unlikely but at least someone is trying it seems to me.
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Re: Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations
I've been an attorney for almost seven years now. I don't know crap about labor law. Just because I'm licensed to practice in every area of law (except patent law -- that requires its own thing) doesn't mean I would know what I'm doing. Would you ask a guy who normally does wills and estates to try a murder case? Not if you're smart. Totally different areas of the law.
I'm not familiar with how the city runs its legal department. But it is not unusual for large corporations to hire outside counsel if that particular firm has expertise in a certain area. The city probably hired one of the best labor law firms in the city to take care of the negotiations.
Why would city attorneys sit around and watch? Hopefully to learn something from them. I know there are guys I watch when they go to trial.
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