Financial Records Show Sharp Rise in East Lansing Legal Costs
East Lansing’s legal costs ballooned during the most recent fiscal year, a trend that coincides with the city’s switch to a more expensive law firm to provide legal services.
Financial records the city provided in response to document requests from East Lansing Info show that the city spent more than $1.5 million on legal costs in the most recent fiscal year, which concluded at the end of June, spending more than double what it did three fiscal years earlier.
When the City Council voted 3-2 to hire Rosati, Schultz, Joppich & Amtsbuechler, P.C. for legal representation in May of 2025, the decision was controversial, largely because the city changed to a firm charging a higher hourly rate when the city was navigating financial turbulence. The council members in favor of the switch touted Rosati’s focus on municipal services, ability to offer a wide range of legal help and suggested the firm would work faster than previous attorneys, offsetting the higher hourly rate.
Mayor Erik Altmann, who supported the switch to Rosati, stands by the decision. Altmann said quality legal representation is critical for local governments and some of the costs are because the firm is spending additional time addressing longstanding issues.
A shift in legal representation
Financial summaries the city gave to ELi in response to records requests show how legal costs have grown over the last five fiscal years.
The city began receiving general and defense legal services from Giamarco, Mullins & Horton near the end of fiscal year 2022, services the firm continued to provide until the end of fiscal year 2025 when the contract turned over to Rosati.
The city’s legal services are now mostly consolidated under the Rosati firm, after being split among several different firms in previous years.
The City Council voted to award a five year contract to Rosati for general services despite a higher hourly rate than Giamarco. Giamarco offered to continue services for $165 hourly, compared to Rosati’s rate of $225 hourly for attorneys with more than 10 years of experience and $175 hourly for less experienced attorneys.
Labor Attorney Gouri Sashital has largely handled labor and employment matters for the city since at least 2014, mostly for Keller Thoma law firm, but for three different law firms in the last year. Sashital left Keller Thoma in 2025 to join Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, PLLC. Despite the hourly rate nearly doubling to $400 hourly, the city retained Sashital in a September 2025 vote. In March of 2026, the City Council voted to change labor services to Rosati, after Sashital joined that firm. This contract is for $250 hourly for attorneys with 10 years of experience or more and $200 for less experienced attorneys.
Legal costs for personnel services grew by the highest rate in fiscal year 2026 to more than $210,000, almost quadrupling the next most expensive year over the last five years.
Prosecution services were also more expensive last fiscal year, though costs have been much more stable for prosecution than other areas. The city paid about $370,000 to Rosati for prosecution services, after paying between $338,000 to $362,000 to Easterly Law PLLC over the previous three years.
Costs have increased for legal services over the last year, but some City Council members indicated they did not believe that would be the case when voting to switch law firms, saying the experience of hired attorneys would help them work faster to offset the higher hourly rate.
“It was a lot faster for me to put together a brief after I had practiced for 20 years in a particular area, and I think the Rosati firm is more likely to actually cost us less because of that,” Councilmember Mark Meadows, a retired attorney, said after supporting the Rosati firm to provide general services in May 2025.
“Sometimes our hourly rates go up, that doesn’t mean we end up paying more,” Altmann said after voting to nearly double the hourly rate for labor and employment legal services in September 2025.
In a July 9 phone call with ELi, Altmann attributed the higher legal costs to additional work by attorneys to address long-held needs.
“They’re able to meet our needs and so we’ve been involving the attorneys in planning and zoning, and [the] Building Board of Appeals … we’ve needed that help and did not have it before and now we have it,” Altmann said.
In response to a question from ELi, Altmann noted that the cost of active litigation may not necessarily be inflating the cost of services, as the city’s insurance company has hired some of the firms that are providing legal defense.
The transition to the Rosati firm was worthwhile, even with the additional costs, Altmann said.
“Their work has been excellent. I think that was a good move for us because legal services are a critical function for the city,” Altmann said. “If we don’t have competent legal services, and if we don’t have the capacity to get done what we need to get done, then the city gets itself in trouble.”