This article asserts that traditional accounts of administrative contracts are no longer suitable for present-day requirements and legal evidence. After analyzing the legal aid system within the criminal procedure reform employing a case methodology, the author points out that those contracts have evolved into complex instruments of administrative intervention. Therefore, once the issue of intervention is resolved by means of economic and legal tools, the question that follows is whether the State should provide goods and services, or whether it should find other mechanisms, such as contracts. The author states that the answer is not always the same and there are various aspects that should be considered. Finally, he argues that given the intervention of privates in public functions, nowadays administrative contracts require sophisticated explanations from the Administrative Law theory regarding the means for guaranteeing people's rights, public controls and dilemmas of the democratic theory, explanations that must deal with public interventions through private suppliers, an issue that is not addressed in traditional arguments.