LEGAL COUNSEL UPDATE · Report

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING                                                              20 JANUARY 2025



C. Optimising Resource Efficiencies
o      Better allocation of resources – reduced load on Governance Team who had been fielding any
       legal requests but not able to provide legal advice. These are now allocated to Legal Counsel so
       Governance can focus on AACs, compliance, investigations etc.;
o      Developing Precedent documents and Templates;
o      Building a network by making connections with other legal counsel at various councils to assist
       with general practice queries and approaches that apply to Council.

D. Legal Advice Database
o      Identified risk that legal advice was being lost, duplicated, or applied inconsistently across
       Council.
o      The legal advice received is a knowledge resource for Council. For this reason, the Legal
       Counsel has launched the ‘LAD’, a centralised legal advice database with appropriate security
       access allocation to maintain privilege in the advice.
o      All legal advice for Council will be stored on the database, using designated naming conventions.
       The database may then be searched for research topics or to address particular matters.
o      It should also prevent duplication in advice received, thus reducing legal spend, and provide a
       knowledge database where advice under certain topics/ areas is easily located.

E. Increased Utility in External Legal Advice
o      Where the technicality, complexity, level of risk or value of a matter requires external legal advice,
       Legal Counsel has added value by synthesising the brief to the external lawyers (so council
       receives the correct advice), then assisting the operational teams with interpreting, and
       implementing the advice to improve processes and procedures.
o      There have also been significant cost savings in having the Legal Counsel initially draft the
       material, and the external legal adviser simply review the draft.

7. Summary
o      Ultimately the major benefit to Council from the implementation of the Legal Counsel role has
       been risk reduction.
       i.   Upskilling staff;
       ii. Better contract Terms and Conditions and contract management;
       iii. Increasing knowledge, awareness, and legal resources;
       iv. Improving quality and utility of external legal advice requested and received.

Link to Corporate Plan

Theme No. 5 - Excellence
This theme focuses on customer experience, financial sustainability, innovation and technology,
levels of service, governance, our employees and volunteers, funding streams and asset
management practices.


Previous Council Consideration
Nil.