b'Local Government Lawyer 5Local government legal departments are struggling with increased workloads, recruitment is increasingly difficult and external advice is expensive. Yet the movement toward shared services and alternative business structures is abating while spending on legal technology remains anaemic. Derek Bedlow looks at what the results of the Legal Department of the Future survey mean for council legal teams.One of the criticisms often levelled at theon legal. A lack of experienced staff in otherThe loss of experience UK economy as a whole is that the busierdepartments has increased the reliance it gets, the less productive it becomes.on legal services to provide support, onein client departments Instead of devising new more efficient waysrespondent said. has increased the burden of doing things, it throws more people atSo how are legal teams coping? Three the problem, increasing employment butstrategies stand out (FIG 2). Using privateon legal teams as less reducing productivity. practice more (mostly solicitors rather Is the same true of the local governmentthan the Bar), expanding the legal teamexperienced clients do legal profession? As it gets busier and busier,and helping client departments to helpnot have the confidence this iteration of the Legal Department of thethemselves. Future survey has found that the immediateOf these, the most popular approach toto take decisions without response is to get more bodies in, while thetackling this growth in work is to send morerelying on legalnew structures and technologies that couldwork to private practice, identified amongst help to increase efficiency are put on thetheir coping strategies by 56% of heads of backburner in the rush to cope. legal, despite the view of many that they Moreover, the increasing tide of work fordo not represent good value for money local government legal departments shows(FIG 3), especially with regards to specialist little sign of abating. Past versions of thisor transactional work. Presently, councils researchin 2011, 2013 and 2015 havetypically send between 10% and 20% of found that the demand for legal services hastheir work to external providers (FIG 4)been on an upward trend for some yearswith regeneration, procurement/contracts, and 2019 is no different.Half of the 76 heads of legal thatFigure 1: In the foreseeable future, do you expect the overall volume of legal work generated took part in the research expect to seeby your authority to:a substantial increase in work while a further 37% expect a more modest rise. Almost nobody expects their workload to fallIncrease signicantly (>10%) 50%in the foreseeable future (FIG 1).The factors behind this growth are manyIncrease slightly (5%-10%) 37%and varied according to the comments left for this question, but increasing commercial activity by councils, regeneration and childStay more or the less the same (+/-5%) 11%protection are the most commonly cited examples. More generally, as has been noted in previous versions of this survey,Decrease slightly (-5% to -10%) 2%the loss of experience in client departments has increased the burden on legal teamsDecrease signicantly (>-10%) 0%as less experienced clients do not have the confidence to take decisions without relying'