The Joint Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Public Safety acknowledged a Department of Justice report on litigation outsourcing during a work session on April 17, 2025, and voted to accept the Legislative Fiscal Office recommendation to receive the report.

The report, provided after a budget note in 2023 that accompanied Senate Bill 5,514, describes how the DOJ used four additional positions approved in 2023 to reduce reliance on outside counsel. "We asked for and, received and are very grateful for, 2 attorney positions and support staff for those 2 attorney positions, 1 paralegal and 1 secretary," said Sheila Potter, chief counsel for the trial division at the Oregon Department of Justice. Potter said the department placed one new attorney in the civil litigation section and one in the special litigation unit to retain more complex cases in-house.

The DOJ estimated savings by comparing the billed hours of the newly hired attorneys through November 2024 with a conservative outside-counsel rate of $400 per hour. That calculation, the department said in the report, produced estimated savings of more than $3,000,000. Based on those results, the department has requested 33 additional positions in its current budget request, 17 of which would be attorneys.

Legislative Fiscal Office staff recommended the committee acknowledge receipt of the report. Co-chair Bridal moved to approve the LFO recommendation and the motion "passes," according to the committee record; no roll-call tally was recorded in the transcript.

The committee closed the work session after the motion and proceeded to a public hearing on House Bill 5,014. The record shows the subcommittee asked the Department of Administrative Services to provide a recommendation and DAS recommended acknowledging receipt of the report.

Because the report said it could not allocate exact savings by client agency — the trial division assigns lawyers by legal area rather than to specific client agencies — the DOJ did not provide an agency-by-agency savings breakdown. The report and witnesses called for further appropriation requests based on the department's analysis that increased in-house capacity reduces outsourcing costs.

Looking ahead, the department's staffing and budget requests that rely on the report’s findings remain subject to future committee consideration during budget deliberations.