Lean in legal context When seeking legal services, clients want • to receive efficient, high-quality legal services; • minimize costs and • maximize budget predictability 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

1. Improving the Quality of Justice
- Experiences with lean in Denmark
By Inger Toft Thiersen, Managing Partner
Viden Assistance (DK)
November 2012
Skopje
November 2012 1

2. Experiences with lean in Denmark
Programme:
• Lean in legal context
• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)
• Project in local Court – Aarhus
November 2012 2

3. 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

4. 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.
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5. Legal processes in VSM
• The processes
– research and
– evaluation,
– investigation,
– discovery,
– trial preparation
• hard to directly observe
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6. 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

7. 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

8. Experiences with lean in Denmark
Programme:
• Lean in legal context
• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)
• Project in local Court – Aarhus
November 2012 8

9. 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

10. 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

11. Experiences with lean in Denmark
Programme:
• Lean in legal context
• Efficiency in Danish Courts (civil)
• Project in local Court – Aarhus
November 2012 11

12. 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
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13. 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
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14. 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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15. November 2012 15

16. Contact:
Inger Toft Thiersen, Managing Partner
Viden Assistance
Tel: +45 2442 6977
Mail: inger@videnassistance.dk
Web: www.videnassistance.dk
November 2012 16