Commercial cases land in hands of trial lawyers.

Trial lawyers are said to be a breed apart from big-firm attorneys who toil for the benefit of their corporate clientele. A number of corporations have noticed the difference, prompting them to hire personal injury lawyers for litigation against competing companies.

The trial lawyer's love of the courtroom and willingness to work for clients on a contingent-fee basis apparently make for attractive lures.

"The plaintiffs' lawyer is a risk-taker," said Chicago lawyer Thomas Demetrio. "In so many of the commercial cases, the corporations 'paper' and 'discover' each other to death, and then the case gets settled.

"If you're general counsel for a corporation and you want a real trial lawyer, I think you'll look for a plaintiffs' lawyer to do the job," said Demetrio, who has represented Chevron Chemical Corp. in litigation against General Electric Co.

The practice of hiring plaintiffs' lawyers for corporate cases is not new, but it is gaining increased attention in the present era of "tort reform" and corporate cost-cutting.

Law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser of Newport Beach, California, said global economic pressures have forced U.S. businesses to reduce costs. This, in turn, has caused corporate general counsel to search for attorneys who will agree to alternative fee arrangements instead of hourly compensation.

Demetrio said he doubted many plaintiffs' attorneys would market themselves to corporations but noted that "smart general counsel" will seek them out when the right case comes to them.

"[Trial attorney] Joe Jamail has been battling corporate America on behalf of corporate America for a long time, and I think general counsels are starting to find other trial attorneys who have similar talents," Demetrio said.

After Jamail's 1987 success in garnering a favorable jury verdict for Pennzoil in Pennzoil v. Texaco, Demetrio said he was surprised that more corporations did not immediately search for contingent fee trial lawyers.

But in the 1990s, "corporate America finally started paying attention to the bills they were receiving and the hourly rates they were paying, and they got upset about it. They wanted to change the fee structures that developed mostly during the 1980s and demand lower rates and fewer people working on the file," added Demetrio.

Sarasota, Florida, attorney Clyde Wilson Jr., who began his career in 1966 as a personal injury lawyer, made the transition into intellectual property law in the late 1970s. He said personal injury lawyers can benefit from taking on commercial cases in several ways.

"There's a nationwide trend toward lower damage awards and zero damages, particularly in areas like medical malpractice," Wilson said. "It's a very well recognized trend, and because of that, a lot of personal injury lawyers are expanding into the commercial field."

Wilson added that commercial litigation offers "repeat customers" to the firm, while personal injury lawyers must cultivate "a constant inflow of new clients" to remain economically viable.

White Plains, New York, attorney Charles Goldberger said "enormous competition" in personal injury law has led many lawyers to branch into new practice areas. "Commercial litigation is the fourth largest membership section in ATLA," said Goldberger, the 1995-96 head of the association's Commercial Litigation Section. "That's an indication that more and more lawyers are doing commercial litigation work."

Corporations also have much to gain by hiring plaintiffs' attorneys because of the lawyers' willingness to work on contingency. Businesses face less financial risk, and they get a better result, according to Wayne Eastman, professor of legal studies at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Management.

"The conflict between the client's interest and the lawyer who charges an hourly fee is greatly mitigated by the contingent fee," Eastman said.

Attorneys who have made the switch, or at least have agreed to take on a few commercial cases, may find scant practical difference between representing a corporation and an individual.

"Trial lawyers have a certain approach--a human orientation--that works very well," Wilson said. "These [commercial] cases aren't all about bits and bytes or patents. Litigators that come from a bigfirm legal department think they can win the battle by [analyzing] accounting standards. They get so bogged down with the numbers, they overlook the human story."