Canadian Lawyer InHouse

MARCH 2017 36 INHOUSE during a time of employee attrition and layoffs, meant more unpaid overtime and inevitably an accelerated lawyer burnout rate, complained the Association of Justice Counsel, the union for government lawyers. But Pentney, who became deputy min- ister in 2012, says the organization had to change. The budget wouldn't budge, but costs were trending up. "In that environ- ment, something has to give," he says. "I have said to people, 'I don't want you work- ing harder. We need to equip you to work smarter and better.'" Dissemination is a signifi cant problem for many large organizations. To address that, the department has introduced a new information-sharing system. Pentney be- lieves this Wikipedia-style platform could help Justice share data better and profi t from its collective memory. Lawyers are asked to upload any signifi cant legal opin- ions, advice, documents, laws, annotated decisions and other material, so colleagues stationed at headquarters or embedded with departments across the country can access the information and learn from it. "We've seen a signifi cant uptick in both the number of contributions to that and use of it," Pentney says. "It's a virtuous circle. The more people who use it and the more who contribute to it, the quality overall improves." That is, the more it's used, the more information it offers — information that could help employees get up to speed more quickly. "We have 2,500 lawyers and we've been around since 1868," Pentney points out. "Surely, somebody's worked on this. If it's there, the system will fi nd it." The department is implementing a simi- lar system for document management. This digital workspace is designed as a single data repository for any and all documents em- ployees are working on, not including high- security information. Collaboration is the point. "If you have fi ve people providing in- put on a legal opinion, they're not emailing around fi ve versions and trying to fi gure out which one's the latest," Pentney says. Not all of the department's legal service units have access to it yet, but they will soon. "We think that's the start of a big win, be- cause it also drives the culture," Pentney says. He envisions a day when new hires are told to store information in the digital work- space, not their computer hard drive. A third new program, perhaps the most important one, is document-search tech- nology to help lawyers and paralegals through the discovery process. The sys- tem tirelessly sorts data, enabling staffers to fi nd relevant information. It's the sort of work that used to be the bane of every articling student. Now, trained paralegals steam through it. "We're able to manage documents at about 10 times the volume every day," Pentney says. Technology is only part of the solution. Better business processes make a differ- ence, too. One new process is meant to take advantage of the repeat work the de- partment does. "If you're doing a routine judicial review in the type of case where we do literally thousands a year — regular immigration and refugee cases, routine tax fi ler appeals — I want you to do those vol- ume cases as effectively as you can." So the department implemented benchmark time frames for routine work. The parameters are guidelines, not fi rm targets. Linked with the improved information-sharing and document-management systems, they help. "We believe we've improved the qual- ity of the individual cases. People are work- ing off the best of the precedents we have, and we continually improve those to work more effi ciently." WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Pentney admits that some of Justice's efforts fl opped. "We had worked with some [client] departments on initiatives. We modelled it out: If we make these changes, this is what we think will happen to our caseload and how quickly we can handle cases. We pre- dicted the ability to gain substantial sav- ings." They didn't materialize. "I can't go into details given the type of work we do," but Pentney says he confi rmed a fact of experimentation: Just because you think something will work doesn't mean it will. "Part of it for me is being humble about what you know." Getting the staff to embrace change is the biggest challenge. No wonder. This isn't just one change. It's many: new technologies, processes and expectations. "I'd say given the cascade in changes throughout government and the pressure people are starting to feel, certainly I hear some sentiment of change fatigue. People It's diffi cult for some people to understand that it will never be done. WILLIAM PENTNEY, Department of Justice

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