Help Wanted

By Barbara Rudolph.

The San Francisco law firm of St. Clair, Zappettini, McFetridge & Griffin was in a jam. Embroiled in a complex defense of an asbestos manufacturer as part of a multimillion-dollar liability suit, the six-member partnership faced a shortage of able-bodied attorneys to handle depositions. St. Clair's solution: the firm hired six lawyers for the job as temps. In the same fashion, when St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minn., needed a qualified radiologist to work for just a month to cover for vacationing staff, they rented the services of a physician who had most recently done similar stints at hospitals in Fort Kent, Me., and Ketchikan, Alaska.

A new breed of temporary worker is jumping into the U.S. labor market: the temp professional. In growing numbers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, computer experts and college professors willing to punch in and out for up to $150 an hour are being snapped up by firms and institutions eager for their services but only for a while. Professionals now account for an estimated 11% of the 800,000 Americans who work each day in temporary positions. The top-drawer temps, whose numbers are increasing about 10% a year, are profoundly changing the $6 billion temporary-service industry.

The boom in upscale help is partly a function of a cost-conscious economic climate. Newly minted lawyers in large cities, for example, can make more than $50,000 a year. Says Anthony Griffin, a partner at St. Clair: "Hiring temporary lawyers enabled us to expand and contract without overextending ourselves."

Since U.S. universities graduate some 37,000 lawyers, 16,000 doctors and 51,000 accountants annually, plenty of labor power is available. Upscale service agencies are springing up to match that supply with the new demand. Temporary agencies that place physicians are an especially fast-growing group. Atlanta's Locum Tenens, founded in 1983, has 2,000 doctors on call. The agency's revenues last year reached $3 million, twice the 1984 total. Typically, a general-practice doctor hired through Locum Tenens is paid a fee of $440 a day. The agency provides malpractice coverage and travel expenses, and in return pockets $190 of the fee.

The Lawsmiths, in San Francisco, is one of the nation's leading legal temporary agencies, with 150 attorneys on call. The Lawsmiths' temps earn up to $75 an hour, of which the agency receives a flat fee of around $10, leading to billings last year of $100,000. The Experts, in Wellesley, Mass., posted $23 million in sales last year by placing computer consultants who earn up to $120 an hour. One of the oldest professional agencies is Accountemps, a franchise outfit that supplies accountants through some 100 offices in the U.S., Canada, Britain and Israel.

The free-lance professionals see plenty of advantages to temp work. Louise Quintard, a 1982 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Law School works as a part-time attorney while she recovers from a back injury. Says Quintard: "This has been a godsend for me."

The new wave of high-caliber nomads induces unease in some circles. The ethics committee of the American Bar Association, for one, is investigating whether attorneys who work only a few weeks for a law firm are likely to violate professional confidences when they move to another assignment. With demand continuing on the rise, though, the professional temp appears to be headed for permanency in the U.S. job market.

With reporting by Cristina Garcia/San Francisco, with other bureaus