Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

Efficiency definition

What does Efficiency mean? Efficiency, in legal practice, means delivering the same or better outcome with fewer resources (time, money, people), or increasing outputs from the same inputs. It is a descriptive term used across public law, procurement, regulation and litigation rather than a single statutory concept, though it features in Best Value and audit frameworks that emphasise the “three Es”: economy, efficiency and effectiveness. In England and Wales the Local Government Act 1999 imposes a Best Value duty; Scotland has the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003; Northern Ireland has the Local Government (Best Value) (Northern Ireland) Order 2006. In Ireland, the Public Spending...

Continuous improvement in law firms: a step-by-step toolkit covering DMAIC, waste identification, process mapping, root cause analysis, 5S, Kotter change model and performance measurement

Published by a LexisNexis Practice Management expert

Practice notes

What is continuous improvement?

The concept of continuous improvement (CI) is frequently made needlessly complex by jargon, yet it is exactly as it sounds: persistently seeking ways to enhance processes, methods and procedures to:

remove obstacles
make them as efficient as possible and therefore
save time and Money

Improvements do not need to be large-scale. A sequence of modest but effective changes quickly adds up. Small wins build momentum. Benefits accumulate fast over time too. Together they save time and money. CI tools and techniques can help you repair processes that are no longer effective and reassess processes that may appear to work but could still be improved to deliver greater efficiencies and cost savings.

Above all, CI is about engaging people and sharing ideas, questioning established habits, and agreeing how to measure the success or failure of new initiatives. See Practice Note: What is continuous improvement in law firms?

Five steps to improving Efficiency

The simplest framework for achieving process efficiencies has five steps:

define—pinpoint the issue or problem
measure—quantify the cost and the impact
analyse—examine the Data to fully understand what it is telling you
improve—generate, evaluate and implement solutions to the problem
control—remeasure to demonstrate effectiveness and...

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Beth Pipe , FCIPD

OnLive Learning

Beth is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD) and has spent over 25 years specialising in Learning and Development. During that time she has worked across a broad variety of different industries and has, for the past 15 years, worked closely with a number of well known law firms; this has involved putting in to place systems and structures to encourage, enable and track the effectiveness of learning activities. Adept at face to face course delivery, and always enjoying excellent feedback, Beth is also accomplished at online delivery and created OnLive Learning in response to the challenges presented by the 2020 Covid-19 restrictions.Beth has written extensively for LexisNexis on subjects such as Performance Management, Managing Change and Stress Management. Away from her training delivery she is a published author writing about local history, hiking, wildlife and the outdoors and is...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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