The town of Marblehead’s spending on lawyers has varied widely from year to year, with the town and school district collectively spending more than $3.2 million on legal services over the past eight fiscal years, according to an analysis of the town’s ClearGov financial data.
Townwide legal expenses totaled about $418,000 in fiscal 2018, fell to roughly $240,000 in fiscal 2021, and then climbed to nearly $780,000 in fiscal 2025.
The town spent about $1.8 million on legal services from FY18 through FY25, including regular municipal expenses and costs associated with capital projects and Town Meeting articles. The school district spent about $1.4 million across its central administration and special education legal accounts.
In the most recent two fiscal years, the schools accounted for much of the increase, spending about $335,000 on legal counsel in FY24 and nearly $494,000 in FY25, compared with a $105,000 budget in each year.
On the municipal side, legal spending also rose to about $286,000 in FY25 across its departments, compared with a budget of roughly $220,000.
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer said legal expenses are inherently difficult to predict because they depend on circumstances that arise during the year.
“Legal budget is pretty much a reactionary line item because you’re having to respond to either external situations coming in or the cycle of contract negotiations,” he told the Current..
Some expenses can be anticipated, such as legal work related to scheduled collective bargaining negotiations, he said.
Other costs are much harder to forecast.
“You put in your best estimate, but you manage it as best you can,” Kezer said.
At the end of the fiscal year, he said, the town can transfer money from accounts that come in under budget to those that exceed their appropriations.
School legal spending nearly quintupled by FY25
The largest recent increase in Marblehead’s legal spending occurred on the school side.
From FY18 through FY25, the district spent approximately $1.40 million on legal services. Spending was relatively modest through FY22 before rising to about $136,363 in FY23, against a $105,000 budget.
In FY24, spending jumped to approximately $334,735, more than three times the $105,000 budget.
In FY25, central administration legal counsel and special education legal services totaled approximately $493,704, compared with a combined budget of $105,000, representing an average of approximately $388,704, or about 370%.
Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Mike Pfifferling, who joined the district in July 2025 and was not involved in developing the FY24 or FY25 budgets, pointed to two major drivers.
“There were two distinct situations that substantially increased legal fees during this timeframe,” Pfifferling said in an email. “The first (which was very well known) was the months of negotiations with the Marblehead Education Association and the subsequent work stoppage. The second would be personnel matters that are not able to be disclosed.”
The Current previously reported that the School Committee faced significant legal costs in FY24 amid the ouster of then-Superintendent John Buckey, a student-restraint crisis, lawsuits and contentious contract negotiations.
The FY25 increase coincided with contract negotiations between the School Committee and Marblehead Education Association that culminated in an 11-day teachers strike in November 2024.
When legal spending exceeds an appropriation, the district generally covers the difference elsewhere in its budget, Pfifferling said.
“Option A is to find available funding from other budget lines within the School Department’s Budget (which is the most common action),” he said.
The district could also seek additional money from the town or request a Reserve Fund transfer, although he was not aware of either having been used for school legal expenses in Marblehead.
Pfifferling also separated special education legal expenses after joining the district because they must be reported independently to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“Having those Special Education expenses broken out allows us to report accurate data,” he said.
The sharp increase on the school side means that the district accounted for roughly 65% of Marblehead’s overall legal spending in the most recent two fiscal years.
According to Pfifferling, those years should not be viewed as routine examples of school legal spending.
“Those two years were unusual given the MEA negotiations and other personnel matters,” he said.
Municipal legal spending exceeded its budget in five of eight years
From FY18 through FY25, the town’s municipal legal counsel accounts exceeded their combined budgets in five years: FY18, FY19, FY20, FY22 and FY25.
The largest overrun came in FY18, when the town spent about $310,000 against a combined budget of $165,879 or roughly 87% more than budgeted.
Spending remained above budget in FY19, at about $218,667 against $174,454, about $230,778 against $192,350 in FY20 and in FY22, $210,150 against $208,100.
The town then stayed below its combined municipal legal budget for two years before exceeding it again in FY25, when it spent about $286,000 against a $219,600 budget, an overrun of $66,400, or 30%.
The largest portion of FY25 spending was the Town Counsel legal account, which accounted for $170,352 against a $110,000 budget. The Select Board Labor Attorney account spent another $91,146 against a $60,000 budget.
Other departmental legal spending included approximately $14,931 in Waste Collection, $6,909 in Planning Board legal expenses and $1,260 in the Abbot Public Library account.
Kezer attributed the FY25 increase to several matters requiring more legal assistance than usual, including police and firefighter collective bargaining negotiations, personnel matters, work related to the Charter Committee, the Officer Christopher Gallo arbitration and Marblehead’s MBTA Communities zoning efforts.
“It was three years of dealing with that issue,” Kezer said of the 3A compliance process.
He said those examples were “probably not everything,” but represented matters that pushed legal costs beyond the normal budget.
Municipal spending includes capital legal costs
The town’s legal spending also includes costs associated with capital projects and Town Meeting articles. From FY18 through FY25, the data shows approximately $78,300 in legal expenses tied to these initiatives.
The entries might initially appear to be separate from the town’s operating legal expenses, but Kezer confirmed that they are not charged to the capital projects themselves.
“All the capital legal costs were charged to the finance department’s legal budget,” he said.
Those expenses are therefore included in the Current’s calculation of overall town-side legal spending.
Town consolidates legal accounts
Historically, legal accounts were spread across town departments. Beginning with the current fiscal year, the town consolidated those accounts under the Select Board department, Kezer said.
“It’s more efficient to consolidate everything into one line item, and that way we’re directing the money to where it’s needed and we’re not stranding the funds in line items that may not even be used,” he said.
The change gives the town a central point of control over when attorneys are engaged and a clearer picture of overall legal spending.
“So that is one way in which we, starting this fiscal year, are working to better manage the legal budget,” Kezer said.
The Planning Board, for example, had a $900 legal budget in both FY24 and FY25 but spent approximately $4,767 and $6,909, respectively.
“Part of the reason of consolidating all these line items under one department is that we can better control and do the accounting of where is our legal spending going and where does it need to go?” Kezer said.
FinCom Reserve gives town a way to handle unexpected costs
The town also has a Finance Committee Reserve account that can cover unexpected expenses rather than building large cushions into individual budgets.
The reserve was appropriated at $444,000 for FY26. As of April 30, 2026, $315,476 remained after $128,524 had been transferred to cover several non-legal departmental expenses, according to the Finance Committee’s 2026 report.
Finance Committee Chair Molly Teets said the town is trying to avoid responding to unpredictable expenses by simply increasing individual budgets.
“From a budgeting standpoint, the town has been moving away from the practice of having line items with significant built-in cushion,” Teets said.
Instead, she said, the town is trying to budget realistically and use the reserve when expenses cannot be anticipated.
Under the system, an unexpected legal expense can be brought before the Finance Committee and Select Board for approval rather than requiring the town to permanently inflate the legal budget in anticipation of every possible lawsuit or dispute.
“It’s designed this way to be more transparent,” Teets said.
Should Marblehead consider an in-house attorney?
The level of legal spending also raises a longer-term question about whether Marblehead could benefit from employing an attorney directly rather than relying primarily on outside counsel.
Teets said she does not believe the town is necessarily at that point, but said it is worth monitoring if routine legal needs continue to grow.
Kezer, however, said Marblehead’s current arrangement remains preferable in his view.
“If you bring them in house, you have to pay salary and benefits for those services,” he said. “The way Marblehead is structured, this would be the optimum way to do legal services.”
The town relies primarily on Mead, Talerman & Costa and occasionally brings in specialized outside counsel.
“It’s rare,” Kezer said. “Only a few times over the last four years that we’ve done that.”
The arrangement also gives Marblehead access to the institutional knowledge of Town Counsel Lisa Mead, who Kezer said has represented the town for more than 20 years.
“Marblehead gets the benefit of having that long relationship as if it’s in-house counsel,” he said. “But that separation from the day-to-day operations that it’s not overly accessed by everybody simply because it’s convenient.”
Management may be as important as the budget
Both officials emphasized that legal spending is not solely a budgeting issue.
Kezer said the new centralized system is intended to put a filter between departments and outside counsel. Department heads can bring legal questions to him, he said, allowing the administration to determine whether attorney involvement is necessary.
“It’s just putting a little bit of a filter on access to ensure that we’re accessing legal counsel because it’s needed and not because it’s convenient,” he said.
Teets said the historical spending data could help officials determine whether the town is seeing occasional spikes or whether some legal costs are becoming routine. She said she plans to pay particular attention to the issue as the town develops its FY28 budget.
“My hope is going forward that that will be trending down,” she said of legal expenses as the town moves past some of the disputes of recent years.
Recent improvements to the town’s financial systems should also make those trends easier to track, Teets said.
“The accounting and financial systems historically were so under invested that they just didn’t have the ability to provide that information in a timely manner,” Teets said.
