In reviewing CPS financial information, I was trying to find out how much the district is paying for its outside attorneys.
Based a review of the CPS website, I could not determine how much CPS is paying for legal services. In my opinion, CPS needs to itemize its expense payments on the website via an accountability portal to give the general general public more information on the district’s spending.
My only choice to find the information was to file Sunshine request. I asked for all legal bills received in calendar year 2022. You can see the request in the pictures below.
Based on the Sunshine response, CPS was billed by its outside attorneys about $300,000 for general attorney services at $190, $220, or more per hour (there were also bills that said they were for specific cases). Reviewing the time, it appears the amount of time spent by the outside attorneys represents less time than a full-time employee would spend on the job.
As someone who has been internal counsel, I know that having a legal counsel on staff is often both cheaper and more efficient than constantly paying fees to outside counsel, which are often 4 times or more costly than internal counsel. CPS needs to seriously look at the return on investment for its legal fees and consider the benefit of having an attorney on staff.
In addition to the fixed cost at a rate lower than outside counsel, having an attorney on staff could also be a resource to:
Having inside counsel would not eliminate the need for outside counsel, but it could be a better use of our funds, and allow us to put some additional money into other priorities, such as educator compensation.
If you want a copy of the Sunshine response from CPS to see the bills for yourself, you can find them here: