Law Times

Page 4 November 3, 2014 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com Federal lawyers honoured for public service by liz Thompson For Law Times I t was a problem Justice De- partment lawyer Pamela Mc- Curry could see looming. In the wake of the 2008 financial downturn, the fed- eral government put together a massive rescue package, pump- ing billions of dollars into infra- structure programs to prop up Canada's economy. McCurry, an assistant deputy attorney general in the aboriginal affairs section and a veteran of previous cost-cutting exercises, knew the money was going to have to come from somewhere. Sooner or later, the government was going to be looking for ways to rebalance its budget and cut its costs, including legal expenses. "I felt that we needed to pre- pare ourselves to respond to all of that," says McCurry in an inter- view with Law Times. That foresight and her success in cutting costs while maintain- ing quality legal services recently earned McCurry the Public Ser- vice Award of Excellence, one of the highest honours handed out to federal public servants. A group of Justice Department lawyers and officials from Public Safety Canada who administered the ex gratia payment program following the Air India disaster were also among those honoured as part of the 2014 awards. While the awards were for their performance within the public service, the lawyers say there are lessons for others in the legal profession. For McCurry, the biggest les- son was about how to respond to a client's desire to reduce le- gal costs while maintaining the same level of service, a problem many law firms across Canada are facing. "It's really a question of how can you respond to demand that may not have declined, may be stable, may be shifting when there is downward pressure on your revenues because clients don't want to pay or they can't pay," says McCurry. The secret to her success, she says, is data. "When you are trying to fig- ure out how you can reduce your cost structure, you need to have data. You need to know where to look. Otherwise, if you do it on a random basis, you're likely to make some important and costly mistakes. Your data can point the way." McCurry says data also makes it easier for lawyers to deal with both the client and their own staff. "Your data can also set the table for really good discussions with your clients because it be- comes shared knowledge. It is what it is. The numbers don't lie. They also point the way for a really good discussion around managing both demand and supply because clients have a real role in it. It's how they use their lawyers and how they are using their lawyers actually does show up in the numbers." Federal Justice Department data, combined with a litigation efficiency review, allowed Mc- Curry to pinpoint a couple of areas where it was spending the most money. Those, of course, were areas where it could drill down to find savings. While the cost-cutting exercise at the Jus- tice Department has been suc- cessful, it hasn't been without controversy. The government has cut dozens of lawyer posi- tions across the department and the union that represents counsel who work for it has reported that morale is low. McCurry, however, points to areas that offered significant savings. "One of them was docu- ment production. That is a huge- ly expensive part of the litigation process," she says. McCurry's section produced templates for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada that allow it to handle many routine transactions such as leases without having to al- ways call in a lawyer. For federal government law- yers Lisa Hitch and James Bren- der, who worked on the Air In- dia ex gratia team, the challenges and the lessons learned were very different. Instead of finding ways to save money, they were part of a team that handed out $6.6 million in compensation for the loss of fam- ily members. In the end, 286 peo- ple received ex gratia payments ranging from $8,000 to $24,000. One of the biggest challenges was determining family relation- ships, says Brender. "A lot of time had passed and family relationships had evolved. Individuals had died. So the proj- ect became much more complex in terms of defining the family relationships that would govern the payment." The key to success, the lawyers say, was teamwork and the ability to bring together experts from various areas of the Justice and Public Safety departments. "There is a tendency, I think, for many lawyers when they first start into practice to think that they need to know the answer," says Hitch. "It takes some maturity and experience to realize that no [single] one of us will ever have the answer and to understand and appreciate what can be gained and the importance of what can be gained by a dialogue amongst experts who are look- ing at the same issue from many different perspectives." 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