b'34 Local Government LawyerBuilding the case for legal evidence management in local governmentAndrea Kilby, Director of UK Business Development at CaseLines, highlights how technology has the power to change the face of legal work in local government.The pressure on local government toforeseeable future. At least half of the 75use existing resources and processes. This make cost savings continueswith centralheads of legal that took part in the surveyincludes outsourcing work to private law government funding reduced by nearlyexpect a significant increase of 10% orfirms which can charge up to 200-300 16 billion over the last decade. One areamore. per houra tactic that further exacerbates where potentially significant savings andWhats surprising is that while costalready overstretched budgets. Surprisingly, operational efficiencies can be made iscontrol is one of the top three challengesgrowth in legal technology spending is in streamlining the way local authoritiesfaced by heads of legal (cited by 53%), manypredicted to be quite slow even though manage legal processes, using technologyhave not yet considered the role technologymost recognise the productivity benefits of to automate routine tasks and cut thecan play in cost reduction. Recruitment isusing it. For many it seems that the difficulty reliance on manually-intensive paper- cited by 70% as the number one problemof calculating the return on IT investment is based processes. With legal caseloads forthey face. But only 10% of respondentsa major impediment.local government expected to increaseexpect to be able to increase the numberThe reality is that technology solutions significantly in coming years, localof lawyers they employ and 8% expect theare out there which will allow local authorities need to rethink their approach. numbers of lawyers in their teams to shrink.authorities to work smarter, streamline The survey, and roundtable discussionprocesses and recoup the cost of the initial Strategy for changethat followed, highlighted that localinvestment in just a matter of months. The Legal Department of the Future 2019government, councils and authoritiesInvestment in technology to enable survey found that 87% of respondentsare likely to fall back to the same copingefficiencies can produce significant cost expect their legal work to increase in thestrategies used in the past and continue tosavings over the longer term, allowing local'