HARRISBURG — Gov.-elect Tom Wolf plans to ban no-bid contracts with private law firms and impose new competitive bidding requirements to make the hiring of outside legal counsel by state agencies more transparent, a spokesman said Wednesday.

The Democrat will issue an executive order implementing the new policies after he takes office Jan. 20, said the spokesman, Jeffrey Sheridan.

Nearly 700 lawyers are on the state payroll. They include 512 employed by the governor's Office of General Counsel to handle day-to-day legal affairs in the 34 departments and agencies, and 181 in the state attorney general's office, which enforces state laws, spokesmen for the agencies said.

“If we can use lawyers employed by the state first, that saves taxpayers' money,” Sheridan said.

Wolf promised during his campaign to ban what he called “crony contracts” with outside law firms.

Barry Kauffman, director of Pennsylvania Common Cause, a nonpartisan good government advocacy group, said competitive bidding for state contracts would ease concerns no-bid contracts are being used to reward politically connected law firms and potentially save money.

Annual spending on outside law firms by the state government has ranged from $33 million to nearly $50 million since 2003, according to figures supplied by the Office of General Counsel. While the total for 2014 was not available, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's administration held its expenditures to $35 million or less in each of his first three years in office.

Corbett hired outside legal advisers in four key cases that were unsuccessful: Defending laws imposing tougher voter-identification requirements and banning recognition of same-sex marriages, challenging NCAA sanctions against Penn State and trying to place the Pennsylvania Lottery under private management.

Wolf's new bidding requirements will require the Office of General Counsel to issue written justification in advance for hiring outside lawyers. That includes providing evidence that the office lacks the legal or financial resources to pursue action on its own and a detailed estimate of labor required.