In November 2008, the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Ethics released Opinion No. 08-451.  The opinion prominently discusses the benefits to lawyers in outsourcing their work to contract attorneys:

Outsourcing affords lawyers the ability to reduce their costs and often the costs to the client to the extent that the individuals or entities providing the outsourced services can do so at lower rates than the attorney's own staff.  In addition, the availability of lawyers and nonlawyers to perform discrete tasks may, in some circumstances, allow for the provision of labor-intensive legal services by lawyers who do not otherwise maintain the needed human resources on an ongoing basis.

The ABA Opinion observed that hiring attorneys are ethically entitled to earn a profit from the differential between the costs of outsourced legal work and the fee they charge to their client:

[T]he fees charge by the outsourcing lawyer must be reasonable and otherwise comply with the requirements of Rule 1.5.  In Formal Opinion No. 00-420, we concluded that a law firm that engaged a contract lawyer could add a surcharge to the cost paid by the billing lawyer provided the total charge represented a reasonable fee for the services provided to the client.  This is not substantively different from the manner in which a conventional firm bills for the services of its lawyers.  The firm pays a lawyer a salary, provides him with employment benefits, incurs office space and other overhead costs to support him, and also earns a profit from his services; the client generally is not informed of the details of the financial relationship between the law firm and the lawyer.  Likewise, the lawyer is not obligated to inform the client how much the firm is paying a contract lawyer; the restraint is the overarching requirement that the fee charged for the services not be unreasonable.