The Legal Practice Board in Western Australia has selected Objective’s content, collaboration and process management solution to enhance their services to legal practitioners.

The Legal Practice Board has statutory responsibility for the admission, supervision and discipline (through the Legal Profession Complaints Committee) of all legal practitioners in Western Australia.

It also regulates the issue of annual practice certificates and administers the Articles Training Program and the law libraries at the Supreme and Central Law Courts.

Graeme Geldart, Executive Director, Legal Practice Board of Western Australia said: “We needed a solution that would provide us with enterprise-wide best practice information management to ensure we maintain a high quality of service for our legal practitioners.”

“We undertook a comprehensive evaluation process and selected Objective based on their experience in similar environments and their demonstrated understanding of organisational needs and legislative requirements to comply with the State Records Act 2000.”

Objective’s security model was influential in the selection process. The Legal Practice Board deals with sensitive information that requires security and restricted access.

Geldart said: “Objective will provide us with a robust secure solution that can be used to search for information enterprise-wide, at the same time allowing us to control access to confidential information.”

The Legal Practice Board operates over four geographical locations and will use Objective to manage the abundance of information and records that they create, maintain and store as a regular part of their business processes.

Currently, the organisation has 2,000 physical files at the Legal Profession Complaints Committee, 600 at the Article Training Program, 17,000 at the Office of the Board and 10,000 practitioner files.

“Establishing a single source for all information means existing multiple systems and information silos are eliminated. Objective will reduce duplication of work, improve collaboration and streamline our business processes. It will provide a solid foundation for sharing information across processes and teams of people regardless of their location,” said Mr Geldart.

For example, previously when a law graduate applied to complete the Articles Training Program and then subsequently to be admitted to practice, hard copies of applications would be scanned or copied and emailed between departments resulting in duplicated copies of the documents stored in multiple locations. Cross checking details of applications or training history was a time consuming, labour intensive process.

Using Objective, all applications will be saved into a student’s electronic file, which will be linked to the course folder they are enrolled in. Rather than each department waiting for hard copies or emails with the legal practitioners training results, staff will be able to easily access the applicant’s complete and up-to-date information immediately via the student folder in Objective.

“The benefits in using Objective are immediate – time saved in processing applications, improved efficiency across departments, consistency of approach to managing information, less use of paper, savings on storage costs and improved services for legal practitioners and the public,” said Mr Geldart.