Is there a conflict of interest between a public attorney and a private attorney?

It is true that the public attorneys' decisionmaking conceivably could be influenced by their professional reliance upon the private attorneys' expertise and a concomitant sense of obligation to those attorneys to ensure that they receive payment for their many hours of work on the case. This circumstance may fairly be viewed as being somewhat akin to having a personal interest in the case. Nevertheless, this is not the type of personal conflict of interest that requires disqualification of the public attorneys. As this court has stated: [A]lmost any fee arrangement between attorney and client may give rise to a conflict ... The contingent fee contract so common in civil litigation creates a conflict when either the attorney or the client needs a quick settlement while the other's interest would be better served by pressing on in the hope of a greater recovery. The variants of this kind of conflict are infinite. Fortunately most attorneys serve their clients honorably despite the opportunity to profit by neglecting or betraying the client's interest. ' ( People v. Doolin (2009) 45 Cal.4th 390, 416, 87 Cal.Rptr.3d 209, 198 P.3d 11.) ¹³