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Thomson Reuters: Helping Overburdened Government Lawyers Do More With Less

Thomson Reuters offers a range of technology solutions that are aimed at easing the burdens faced by the busy government lawyer.

By Brian Dalton  
on

Government employees have long embraced the task of helping to create safer communities with very little fanfare or praise. While it’s never been easy, these days, government lawyers are facing even more of an uphill battle. Today, our government legal workforce is being asked to tackle larger and more complex workloads with tighter budgets and fewer resources. Add to that the widespread retirement of baby boom-era civil servants who are taking with them a wealth of institutional knowledge, and you have the perfect storm of a work environment that presents government lawyers with complex challenges to be conquered every day.

Thankfully, Thomson Reuters offers a wide range of technology solutions that are aimed at easing the burdens faced by the busy government lawyer. Legal software designed specifically with the needs of government attorneys, courts, libraries, and investigators in mind helps civil servants to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, by taking into account the biggest challenges these dedicated workers face.

Tackling the Real Challenges

There’s no question that things need to change. Thomson Reuters recently took a look at the landscape of government legal work to uncover the biggest challenges that are making the status quo unsustainable. Some eye-opening statistics emerged. Flat or decreasing budgets were reported by 80% of government attorneys, even though 79% of the workforce anticipated that their workloads would be increasing over the next few years. The average government lawyer reported working on 32 unique legal matters each week, with 6 hours of the week spent on getting up to speed on new and unfamiliar areas of law.

While these figures might come as no surprise to our overworked civil servants, they clearly highlight the need for technology that will help government attorneys not only manage, but thrive, in such a challenge-rich environment. The demands on a government attorney’s time are ever-increasing, and there need to be resources available to help streamline processes and find the information needed to get the job done.

While practicing law has always been a juggling act, few people are expected to be Jacks or Jills of all trades more than government attorneys. Facing a wide range of issues and matters every day means countless hours spent staying on top of new laws and regulations. The task of being up to speed becomes even more daunting in the face of an entire generation of institutional knowledge that’s slowly disappearing. Nearly half of the state and local government workforce is eligible to retire by 2019, taking their decades of knowledge and honed expertise with them.

Their successors are staring down a huge chasm of knowledge that they need to fill. The answer to conquering the problem lies in innovative solutions and tools that increase efficiency and improve the ways government law departments practice, even when budgets are tight and resources are limited.

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Take Back Your Time with Government Resources from Thomson Reuters

Speak to nearly any government attorney, and they’ll tell you that there’s just not enough time to get it all done. Government lawyers are increasingly seeing a loss of control over their time, due in large part to routine tasks that eat up about 60% of the average day. By automating these tasks, Thomson Reuters is allowing attorneys to recover lost time and use it to strategically manage workloads.

  • Drafting – Approximately 45% of the typical government attorney’s time is spent drafting, reviewing, and proofreading legal documents. Thomson Reuters offers convenient tools like Drafting Assistant, FormFinder, and Contract Express that automate drafting and bring document assembly into the 21st century, dramatically reducing the time it takes to accurately complete these every-day tasks.
  • Research – Getting up to speed can take hours when you’re starting from scratch, and spare time is a luxury that the busy government attorney simply doesn’t have. With tools like Westlaw and Practical Law at your fingertips, you’ll have the resources you need to do it quickly and accurately. With the wave of retirements facing the government sector, the resources offered by Thomson Reuters are the best available alternative to the institutional knowledge the experienced workers are taking with them when they retire.
  • Knowledge Management – Once you’ve tapped into these new sources of institutional knowledge, it’s crucial that you retain the information. The same is true of the knowledge you can glean from your experienced employees before they go. Thomson Reuters offers West km, a knowledge management system that retains and organizes your existing work product so you can easily access it in the future, saving you the need to reinvent the wheel and maximizing your efficiency.

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  • Intelligence – When you need information fast, Thomson Reuters has you covered. Investigators can quickly locate people and business with the PeopleMap and Company Investigator tools, allowing them to identify potential risks and understand crucial connections in record time. If you’re more focused on current events, there’s a repository of legal news and trending topics geared toward government employees.

Government work is some of the most challenging out there, and the landscape is constantly evolving. You need to stop wasting valuable time trying to play catch-up, and focus instead on ways of working smarter, faster, and more efficiently. The tools offered by Thomson Reuters allow you to look forward and reclaim control of your time. Tackling the challenges of government legal work just got easier, allowing you to do more with less and focus on the important work at hand.

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