even when evilCorp has their own in house team of evilLawyers, they normally hire outside evilLawyers to handle the cases at trial. in house evilLawyers might not have court/trial experience, and the type of evilLawyer that likes court/trial tend to not like office evilLawyer work. also, in house evilLawyer might not be registered in the state of the trial.
> "I'd expect the legal team were employees, too."
The article actually says this:
> "Despite Facebook hiring several law firms to defend their case, Soldati, representing himself, was able to successfully argue Meta/Facebook committed a breach of contract and that they were not immune under the Communications Decency Act"
(edited out how I originally wrongly introduced this quote)