Thomson Reuters Survey: Govt Attorneys Face Workload, Budget Challenges; Steve Rubley Comments

A new Thomson Reuters study has found that 76 percent of government lawyers expect a rise in their workloads over the next few years.

Thomson Reuters polled 238 lawyers in city, state and federal agencies for the Government Law Departments 2017 report and found that 67 percent of them said they think limited budgets and resources would add pressure to their workloads, the company said Wednesday.

“While attorneys in private practice can defer work outside of their practice area and corporate counsel can send work to firms, government lawyers generally can’t turn down work,” said Steve Rubley, managing director of the government segment at Thomson Reuters.

On average, agency attorneys work on 32 unique legal issues per week and spend six hours each week to study unfamiliar law matters, according to the study.

The survey also showed that 46 percent of public sector attorneys face challenge in keeping themselves updated with changes to current laws as well as with emerging legal matters.

“Technological resources and workflow solutions are important resources government attorneys should use to help improve their efficiency, allocate their time more effectively and mitigate the loss of institutional knowledge in the retirement wave if they are going to successfully address the wide array of legal matters they deal with regularly,” Rubley added.