Los Angeles leaders are looking at the city’s ballooning legal tab and asking a blunt question: Why keep paying top dollar to outside firms when City Hall could bulk up its own legal team instead?
Several City Council members are pressing the City Attorney’s Office to add staff after a run of pricey outside counsel bills and rising legal judgments that have strained the general fund. Their motion asks the City Attorney for a detailed blueprint laying out how many deputy attorneys and specialized positions would be needed so more work can be handled in-house and less farmed out to private firms.
At its February committee meeting, the Budget & Finance Committee and the Personnel & Hiring Committee advanced the motion to the full council and told the City Attorney to return with a comprehensive staffing plan. The committees asked the City Attorney, with help from the City Administrative Officer and the Personnel Department, to spell out the number of new positions, recommended class codes, proposed salary ranges, recruitment timelines, and the projected fiscal impact of shifting work to in-house teams, according to the Budget & Finance Committee.
Big legal bills behind the push
The staffing drive follows a series of high-dollar outside counsel bills that have eaten into reserves and forced emergency transfers. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, a Gibson Dunn contract billed the city $1.8 million for two weeks of work, and the council pulled millions from the unappropriated balance to cover added costs. Councilmember Tim McOsker labeled that kind of spending “bad fiscal management,” the paper noted.
A report from the City Attorney cited by Westside Current estimated that hiring five additional deputy city attorneys could have saved roughly $4 million in protest-related litigation over three years. The report also warned of growing “nuclear verdicts” that are driving payouts higher. Westside Current further reported that the city budgeted about $3.25 million for outside counsel in 2024–25 and then shifted roughly $4.4 million from the unappropriated balance to cover added legal costs, even as police misconduct payouts and other judgments pushed total commitments well past the reserves that had been set aside.
What the motion asks
Filed Jan. 13 by Councilmembers Tim McOsker and Katy Yaroslavsky, the motion directs the City Attorney, working with the CAO, Personnel Department, and bargaining groups, to present a staffing plan that identifies needed hires across litigation, advisory, and specialized units. The plan is expected to describe recruitment strategies and detail any Civil Service or Council actions that would be required.
The motion specifically calls for an assessment of hiring barriers, retention challenges, and workload impacts. It also asks the City Attorney to include an accelerated process for reviewing judgments so they reach the Claims Board and the Budget & Finance Committee within 30 days, according to the Personnel & Hiring Committee.
Why this matters
City leaders are essentially weighing two imperfect options. They can keep outsourcing expensive litigation and risk draining reserves when big cases hit, or they can invest in in-house capacity that might lower long term costs but requires upfront budget trade-offs.
As the Los Angeles Times coverage highlighted, emergency transfers to pay outside lawyers can happen quickly and leave less money for other services. Supporters of the motion argue that a stronger in-house team is as much a fiscal strategy as a legal one. Skeptics counter that hiring more staff will mean cuts or delays elsewhere during a tight budget year.
Next steps
The committees have forwarded the motion to the full council and requested that the City Attorney, CAO, and Personnel Department return with data and cost estimates. Westside Current reported that the item advanced this month and that the Chief Legislative Analyst has been asked to advise on any code or policy changes needed to enforce the proposed 30-day judgment timeline.
When the item returns to the council floor, members will have to decide how high to prioritize City Attorney hiring against the long list of other pressures in the city budget.
