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 five-step DMAIC guide with client complaints case study

Published by a LexisNexis Practice Management expert

Practice notes

The five steps

This Practice Note outlines a straightforward five-step continuous improvement (boosting efficiency) framework and shows its application through a case study about client complaints.

The five steps in this efficiency-improving framework are:

define (ie identify)
measure
analyse
improve
control

Management consultants often refer to this as the DMAIC framework. It is an excellent framework to follow when enhancing an existing process. It takes you through each element in sequence and ensures the process has been considered from every angle.

What does each step involve?

The table below sets out each of the five steps and illustrates them by reference to a hypothetical scenario, ie ‘we receive too many complaints’.

Define (identify)

Identify what the issue or problem is. The scope of the problem needs to be defined, and the symptoms stated clearly and succinctly. The problem may not be fixed at this point; you may have described what you believe the problem to be but, once you have completed steps 2 and 3, the ‘problem’ may need to be...

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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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