Improving the Quality of Justice

- Experiences with lean in Denmark

By Inger Toft Thiersen, Managing Partner

Viden Assistance (DK)

November 2012Skopje

November 2012 1

Experiences with lean in Denmark

Programme:

• Lean in legal context

• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)

• Project in local Court – Aarhus

November 2012 2

Lean in legal context• When seeking legal services, clients want

– to receive efficient, high-quality legal services;

– minimize costs and

– maximize budget predictability.

• The solution is waste reduction and value development — lean

– simple in concept but enormously difficult in practice

• Can lean principles deliver more value to the client

– by decreasing waste in litigation case management and

– maintain (or increase) profitability of the court?

November 2012 3EIPA

Unevenness / Overburden• Mura (unevenness), in the manufacturing industry, is the variation

or inconsistency in quality, cost, or delivery in an operation.

• In legal services, examples of mura involve the excessive reworking and double-checking of others’ work or unnecessary overtime incurred due to time mismanagement.

• Muri (overburden) is the unnecessary or unreasonable overburdening of people, equipment, or systems by demands that exceed capacity.

November 2012 4

Legal processes in VSM• The processes

– research and

– evaluation,

– investigation,

– discovery,

– trial preparation

• hard to directly observe

November 2012 5

5 S in legal work• Sort is organization across the workplace. From sorting office materials to

computer desktops and file systems.

• Straighten the tools of service by designating central locations to access these tools of service. This straightening is not limited to pencils and paperclips; it includes email systems, file storage and retrieval, databases, and library resources, too.

• Scrub and systematize— regularly maintain the tools of service in an orderly and clean manner. Designate a regular schedule whereby the work environment, are evaluated and maintained.

• Standardize the maintenance processes of the workplace. This standardization means using discipline and processes to ensure that the regular maintenance is performing to standardized and acceptable levels.

November 2012 6

5 S - Standards• Legal forms

• Standard for often used letters

• Standards for verdicts

• Knowledge bank– Who has done this before?

– Who can I collaborate with?

– Who needs to know this?

– Where can I post this so someone can use it when they need it?

November 2012 7

Experiences with lean in Denmark

Programme:

• Lean in legal context

• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)

• Project in local Court – Aarhus

November 2012 8

Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)• Physical appearance - Increasingly telephone conf.

• Correspondence with courts often doc in e-mails

• Procedure is oral, but the court receives word doc of planned summary

• Courts are getting bigger – and has a knowledge manager

• All judges have PC, in High Court one judge uses a PC to note testimonials directly

November 2012 9

Project in Bar Society • The Disciplinary Board is a part of the Danish Bar and

Law Society and handles complaints against lawyers.

• New rules in handling complaints calls for extra work

burden

• Lean project to release resources to case handling

• Focus on workflows and routines to be changed

November 2012 10

Experiences with lean in Denmark

Programme:

• Lean in legal context

• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)

• Project in local Court – Aarhus

November 2012 11

Project in local Court – Aarhus• Administration receiving mail, telephone calls etc.

• Goals:

– Handling letters and phone calls

• getting it right 1st time

– Handling cases faster

• no piles after 6 month

– Higher quality – guides updated

• less cases to be redistributed

– Competence – lawyers should cover 2-3 legal areas

November 2012 12

Project in local Court – Aarhus• Communication goals

• Workshops creating VSM

• Sharing Best Practise

• Fight piles

– more people to help in peaks

– checklists

– creating a rack for cases

– schedule for which lawyer takes the case

November 2012 13

Project in local Court – Aarhus• Schedule for phone calls

– duty schedule for incoming calls

– electronic system to find/save

information

– less interruptions

– better quality

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November 2012 15

Contact:

Inger Toft Thiersen, Managing Partner

Viden Assistance

Tel: +45 2442 6977

Mail: inger@videnassistance.dk

Web: www.videnassistance.dk

November 2012 16