Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31October 2016 LocalGovernmentLawyer 16 “People who would have relied on their experienced colleagues now need legal a bit more,” suggested Golder. “As a result, we’re restructuring the way that we work with services. In the old days, we would have had one principal lawyer, three senior lawyers and three to five other lawyers…. Now we are streamlining that. As principals, we are now managing up to 25 lawyers at all levels as well as meeting our own chargeable targets of 1000 hours a year. Fee-earners without management responsibilities have targets of 1300 chargeable hours a year. That’s a real change from the way things were before.” This mirrors the findings of Local Government Lawyer’s Legal Department of the Future survey, published in February this year, which indicated that legal teams were increasing their capacity at junior levels, including paralegals. Delegates at the roundtable expressed concern, however, that lawyers were increasingly having to do their own administration, with cuts being made to the level of dedicated support provided to the legal team. “If cuts have to be made, admin is the obvious place to cut but it can become a false economy,” said Suffolk Coastal’s de Prez. Good neighbours Delegates were meanwhile asked whether they would consider instructing those legal departments and shared services which are looking to boost their external income. Middleton-Albooye said Enfield would certainly think about using other authorities for litigation. “The way that the courts are structured in London, a lot of cases are in West London so it doesn’t make sense to have our own advocacy team but we may look at using a West London authority for that work.” Ruksana Munir, Principal Litigation Lawyer at LGSS Law (the alternative business structure owned by Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Central Bedfordshire Councils) said her team has been able to grow its practice. The costs compare well, she added: “We are very competitive compared to many legal services providers”. Asked what would happen if LGSS Law were to get a surge of its own authorities’ litigation and how it would balance that with external clients’ work, she said: “We have a very broad base of consultants and strong connections with chambers which ensures that we can provide the best service to our clients.” By way of example, Munir pointed to a recent inquest handled for a client. “We had counsel but I was on hand to update the client and organised the inquest bundles.” LGSS Law has 23 members of staff in the litigation team and a number of offices, so it has depth, she added. Exploiting technology Finally, delegates at the roundtable considered whether dispute resolution teams could make greater or better use of technology. Like the respondents to the survey, they reported having mixed experiences, particularly when it came to dealings with the courts and other parties. They gave only a cautious welcome to plans recently unveiled by the Government and the judiciary for the ‘digital transformation’ of the courts, with some £700m to be made available to implement initiatives such as online dispute resolution. Having the will and desire is all well and good, but it is what happens on the frontline that matters, the delegates said. “The Ministry of Justice keeps rolling out these things,” said Bexley’s Wong. “I remember a few years ago ‘speedy summary justice’ which tried to introduce robust case management [in prosecutions] but I haven’t seen much evidence of that since.” “What would be more useful for us is e- filing,” he added. “Court technology is bitty. It’s virtually unheard of at County Court level (there’s Money Claim online but that is about it) although there are some moves in the Magistrates Court. One problem with e-filing, though, is that they haven’t provided greater [technological] capacity so a colleague of mine had to send 10 emails to get all the documentation through for a fraud prosecution. I rather fear that while the ideas are good the technology needs to be ramped up.” Another “huge issue”, as one delegate described it, is that the parties and courts are often using incompatible systems. And the courts often expect local authorities to deal with the associated costs this situation creates. Tanya Corsie, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Iken Business, said a key issue was getting documents to the court in a secure ISO and government compliant “Prosecuting cases in-house has enabled the officers to take many more cases to court knowing that I could deal with trials and keep costs down. It has encouraged officers to take cases all the way, although we still use counsel for more specialist areas such as planning.” Heather Stevens Mid-Kent Legal Services