Question about taking the case

I haven't read the book but the movie made it look like Travolta's firm had agreed to take the case w/o Travolta's knowing it. Wouldn't they have had to enter some type of Attorney/Client contract? Also, it looked like the case had been sitting dormant for a while. Civil cases can be extremely time sensitive with a number of deadlines, statutes of limitation, and so on. If they had taken the case and sat on it, preventing the victims from getting another lawyer, while the relevant statutes of limitations were expiring then couldn't Travolta's firm have suffered some type of liability?