In Tale of 2 Texas Cities, Austin Spends $1M per Year on Outside Counsel, Ft. Worth Less Than $500K

Over the past six years or so, the city of Austin, Texas, has paid outside counsel approximately $1 million annually to litigate cases on the municipality's behalf.

Nearby Fort Worth, Texas, had a total legal table of only about $2.5 million over the same period--and lower costs, to boot, for in-house counsel, reports the American-Statesman.

By contrast with Austin's 48 city lawyers and in-house legal budget of $7.7 million, Fort Worth has 35 lawyers and a $5.8 million budget.

Why the difference? Nobody seems to know.

"There's not like any kind of matrix that you can lay out and say, 'This is when you hire somebody, and this is when you don't,' " executive director Chuck Thompson of the International Municipal Lawyers Association told the newspaper. "It's going to vary city to city."

Conflicts of interest can drive up costs, he noted.