Lawyers out of law school have a pretty hard time practicing on their own. A lot of these broke lawyers never get a substantive job and never really become lawyers. You can hire these people but you need someone to manage and train them. You need an expert.
The cheaper fields of law pretty much do that. Personal injury, traffic and dui, immigration, insurance defense etc. will take broke lawyers and pay them shit. They bill out at ~200 dollars an hour, but don't collect anywhere near 40 hours a week. The associates are getting paid in the 50k a year range.
There are good reasons most companies don't try to do litigation in house. Litigation comes and goes and isn't steady. I'm defending a medium sized company on a patent case. But they have a patent case maybe 2-3 times a decade. During certain parts of the case we'll need 2-3 associates working full time. But a year ago they had no need for even one patent litigator.
Plus certain parts of the case are hard to handle with in house lawyers. They might be forbidden to see certain confidential documents.
Another big difference is that law is specialized. A guy who does DUI defense doesn't have the slightest idea how to do a patent troll case. And a patent lawyer can't do a DUI case. Once you gain that experience you aren't a broke lawyer anymore.