How Council Legal Teams Can Build a Resilient, Cost-Efficient Service

Council legal teams know this well. Demand keeps growing, and budgets keep tightening. The recurring question is how to deliver more legal work, to a high standard, without adding headcount. Alongside this sits the need to control external spend, keep workloads visible and maintain continuity when colleagues are away. In a recent LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions webinar, Rochdale Borough Council shared its experience of bringing legal work back in-house. Together, the panel explored practical ways councils can address these pressures and build a more resilient legal service.

Start with outcomes, then shape the solution

Often, the first thought is to change the technology. Start by defining what that change needs to achieve, whether that is bringing more work in-house, improving workload visibility or reducing routine administration. These outcomes should guide how the technology and processes are configured around your team. At Rochdale, controlling costs and gaining greater control over legal work were the two main drivers behind its insourcing programme.

Assess current capacity

Before assuming a need for more people or more outsourcing of work, take the time to understand how the department is functioning with the current technology. There may be opportunities to release capacity by reducing the administration around legal work. 
Often, council legal departments are overstretched due to the cumulative impact of numerous small issues, such as hunting for documents, hand-cranking reports in spreadsheets, re-keying the same information into different systems, or working out who is responsible for a piece of work. Each task might only take a few minutes individually, but across a whole team over months, it adds up. 
Understanding how the department works and where time is lost helps identify where automation, connected information and clearer processes could make the greatest difference

Start simple, improve continuously

There’s a real temptation to design an all-singing, all-dancing solution that fixes everything on day one. As the panel discussed, a practical starting point is to address the core requirements and everyday pain points, with the flexibility to introduce further workflows, reporting, integrations and automation as the service develops.

Court bundling is a good example, as it is often time-consuming. At Rochdale, a solicitor or legal officer clicks a button in the case file and enters the hearing date. Calendar entries land in the various team calendars, telling them to prepare the bundle seven days before the hearing. If the hearing is less than three days away, an urgent email goes out. The lawyer no longer has to remember each separate reminder and follow-up. It sounds small, but it saves them a lot of time.

Make the matter the single source of truth

Alongside reducing manual steps, teams need ready access to the information behind the work. Good document management processes are essential. When documents live in different repositories, such as an individual’s OneDrive, a network drive, or an Outlook inbox, getting a complete picture of a matter becomes difficult.

Instead, bring everything together around the matter, rather than the individual lawyer. This facilitates resilience in practice, reducing reliance on one person’s knowledge and making it easier for colleagues to pick up work when someone is absent. Documents, correspondence, tasks and key dates provide the context they need. Lawyers get to be lawyers, with less time spent piecing together information.

Plan for data migration

Creating that shared view starts with getting data and documents into the right place. Planning for migration early helps ensure the team has the information it needs when work moves into the system.

At Rochdale, this preparation meant that previously handled files and their documents were available when the new team started. The council worked with LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions to coordinate the transfer alongside the development of the applications needed to support the work.

Get the data and document management right, and you create a stronger foundation for day-to-day work, reporting and future AI use.

Bring people with you

Change is difficult in any scenario. Involve the team from the start, find champions, and engage fully to make sure everyone is bought into the process.

The system must add value to users’ work. Understanding what lawyers and support colleagues need from it helps shape processes that make their day easier. Seeing practical benefits, such as fewer reminders to send or less time searching for information, helps build confidence and encourages adoption.

Build skills in-house for flexibility

Councils reorganise, priorities shift, and new legislation arrives. A system that can’t be flexible ends up surrounded by workarounds and side spreadsheets, and visibility is lost. A flexible platform with good governance means the legal department can adapt as requirements change.

Building skills within the council supports this flexibility, backed by an ongoing relationship with LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions. Our Professional Services team helps colleagues develop the confidence to manage reporting and make appropriate changes themselves, while remaining available to support everything from small adjustments to more involved development.

At Rochdale, sharing system and reporting knowledge within the support team has also reduced reliance on one person to retrieve information, helping strengthen the service’s resilience.

Make measurement a by-product

As improvements take shape, teams need to understand the difference they are making. Decide what success looks like, define the parameters, and capture the data as a by-product of work. Recording information consistently as matters progress means reports can be generated without asking colleagues to piece the data together afterwards. Determine upfront a baseline for measurement, whether that relates to caseloads, the time taken to progress matters or costs. This gives managers a clearer basis for resourcing decisions and further improvements.

Why LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions makes a good partner

Experience matters when changing how a legal service runs. LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions has worked with legal professionals for over 40 years and has supported county, city, borough and metropolitan councils.

At Rochdale, that partnership supported bringing legal work back in-house and preparing the systems and information the new team needed. During the webinar, the council highlighted the value of consultants who understood its legal requirements, regular account management and responsive support.

For councils considering similar changes, the discussion offers a practical starting point for understanding where capacity is being lost, what the team needs and how technology and expertise can help.

Watch the webinar for Rochdale’s experience and practical advice from the panel.