Wednesday, December 11, 2002

When a local nonprofit organization or charity needs support, in time or money, on whom does it call first? Local people, of course. That would include local lawyers, who might contribute professional services and advice to churches, civic organizations, youth groups and the like.

I thus find it disturbing to read news reports that Peachtree City has just hired a new city attorney from Newnan, in Coweta County, and a new prosecutor for its municipal court from Jonesboro, in Clayton County. Peachtree City already retains the services of a Coweta County lawyer to serve as its municipal court judge. That makes it three lawyers who are all from outside Fayette County. When Peachtree City retained special counsel earlier this year, it also went out of the county.

It is fortunate our other cities do not do that. While Fayetteville uses an out-of-county lawyer, from Clayton County, for its city attorney, its municipal court solicitor and its two judges are from Fayette County. Tyrone also has an out-of-county city attorney, the same one as Peachtree City, but its municipal court solicitor and judge are both from Fayette County. The city attorney for Brooks, with a population of about 600, is from Clayton County.

The Fayette Board of Education used to have a local lawyer as its attorney. That attorney resigned about four or five years ago, for reasons that were never disclosed. Lawyers sometimes resign when their client persists in engaging in conduct that is illegal. Legal rules may prevent the lawyer from ratting on his client, but when the client is a public body like the Board of Education a persistent press could go find the answer somewhere else.

After that unexplained resignation, the Board of Education hired a law firm from Gainesville, Ga., a hundred or so miles away. (For county school superintendent it eventually hired a local resident, after first getting us a superintendent from Cobb County.)

Our county government, to its credit, uses a law firm with roots in our own community.

At the state level, three of our four Superior Court judges, including the most recently appointed one, are from outside Fayette County, and so is the District Attorney himself, although he has some local staff.

On balance, our local governments are not all that kind toward the lawyers who live, work and pay taxes in Fayette County, Peachtree City being now the worst of them. The current State Bar directory shows 207 lawyers with addresses in Fayette County, so one could hardly say we have a shortage of them.

There are those who would say, of course, that if our local lawyers had the expertise they would get hired. That is total nonsense. Expertise comes from doing the work, and at every election we elect people "who have never done it before." Recent news reports told us Governor-elect Perdue had just gone to "governors school," for training on doing his upcoming job. Congressmen and other legislators get orientation sessions too and they survive quite nicely.

Our own Kathy Cox will do fine as state school superintendent. (She could not do worse than Linda Schrenko!) When we started our Fayette State Court, in 1997, we had a brand new judge and a brand new prosecutor, of whom it could have been said that they had never done it before, and they have done just fine.

While I would not advocate xenophobia in any form, I find it disturbing that some of our elected officials should be so naive as to think the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and that there are no available Fayette County residents who could competently perform our local governments' legal work. All our local elected officials should get their head out of the sand and consider hiring people from our own community.

Our elected officials, Peachtree City's being the latest, also seem to have the notion that they need to bid out legal positions. I believe it is inexperience and naivete that impel them to do that.

As government grows, and as the body of laws we all have to comply with increases, it can be much more efficient and economical to get much of our local governments' legal work done in-house. There will always be reason to retain outside specialists, from time to time, but an in-house lawyer dedicating his entire time and effort to his government client could do a lot to ensure compliance with the law and keep his client out of expensive trouble.

In a way, an outside lawyer welcomes trouble such as lawsuits: it means more work and more money. An in-house lawyer never does, because even though his workload would increase his salary would stay the same.

When our local governments have job openings, they usually don't go bid them out. They come up with a reasonable, competitive salary, and they ask for applications. That's how city managers, finance managers, accountants, engineers, and just about everybody else is hired. Lawyers are no different.

For normal, routine legal work, of which there is plenty because we have so many laws, there should be a legal department and a lawyer in charge. Brooks, Tyrone and perhaps Fayetteville may be too small to justify full-time legal help, but the county itself, the Board of Education and Peachtree City should be ready for that.

Even when part-time legal help is sought, strong consideration should be given to local lawyers. One good reason might be that since they live here, they care more.

Bids by the hour from lawyers, such as the $110 per hour Peachtree City is reported to have accepted, are to a large degree illusory. Some lawyers can do in one hour what others might do in three, and they might do it better. Some lawyers may charge "from portal to portal" when they have to travel, which adds to the cost but not to the value of the legal services. Lawyers also have paralegals and administrative assistants: their time has to be billed, and at a rate lower than the lawyers'.

On balance, I doubt the new administration in Peachtree City has done its taxpayers any favors by hiring out-of-county lawyers. Nobody might care much that it has not done local lawyers any favor, but just as nobody tries to bring Atlanta's Bill Campbell to serve as Peachtree City mayor, perhaps our elected officials could stop imagining that outsiders have all the answers and the locals know nothing. When our elected officials need favors or votes, it's the locals they'll be going to.

If the talent to be mayor of Peachtree City can be found in Peachtree City, so can the talent to be city attorney, or solicitor, or municipal court judge.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville

cypaquin@msn.com

[Paquin is a "semiretired" attorney and actuary.]