The Complete Guide to Contract Lawyering: What Every Lawyer and Law Firm Needs to Know about Temporary Legal Services

Overall, a useful guide. However, it suffers the failing of books that are locked into a specific timeframe. Law firm practice has continued to evolve greatly, and some of the advice and examples are very dated. Get the newer edition (2003), and you will be better served.

This is an excellent resource for a rapidly developing area of legal practice. It describes the history and context of contract lawyering, discusses ethical, tax and malpractice concerns, and includes charts, graphs, worksheets and five useful appendices. It even offers summaries of relevant state, local and national ethics opinions. Anyone contemplating becoming or hiring a contract lawyer should read this book.

This is an excellent and thoroughly-researched resource for anyone considering entering into a temporary legal relationship, either as a contracting attorney or hiring attorney. It's well-organized and thoughtfully written, and one of the chapters even includes sample letters of engagements and retention agreements, a handy starting point for newcomers to the world contract lawyering.

There are significant risks and benefits with contract lawyering arrangements. For those practitioners who are, or who may become involved in such arrangements, this book is an extremely useful and cost-effective tool in developing an awareness of several critical issues. The book is readable, without jargon, and does not fail to address a variety of problem areas, namely conflicts of interest, client consent, billing and professional malpractice liability coverage.

What I liked about the book is that it dealt effectively with the questions about lawyer temping that I wouldn't have thought to ask and proceeded to answer them all. I also liked the step-by-step guide for marketing yourself as a contract lawyer. Best of all, tho, it's got sample forms and contracts and covers issues like malpractice insurance, independent contractor status and all the ethical issues involved with being a contract lawyer.