Sectors / Professional Services / Tracey Solicitors – Preparing Files for Hearing Case Study
Tracey Solicitors: File prep cut from 6 hours to 1
An employee used Value Stream Mapping to analyse the hearing file preparation process — reducing 370 documents to 69, cutting preparation time from nearly 6 hours to just 1 hour.
Legal / Personal Injury
Lean Practitioner
Dublin, Ireland
6 → 1 hr
File preparation time (83% reduction)
370 → 69
Documents in the hearing file
5 hrs
Saved per file prepared for court
Nearly 6 hours to prepare a single file for court — and it might not even be used
An employee at Tracey Solicitors identified that preparing a file before a solicitor takes it to court was taking almost 6 hours per file. The process was both time-consuming and resource-intensive.
The additional frustration was that in many cases, the preparation was wasted:
- If the case was settled before hearing, the paper file was not used at all
- If the case ran to hearing, the file might be required — but contained far more documentation than necessary
- In both outcomes, the file was returned to the office and kept until costs were agreed
- The process consumed significant resources: staff time, paper, printing, and physical storage
- Files contained an average of 370 documents — many of which were never referenced in court
The employee saw an opportunity to dramatically reduce both the time and the volume of documentation, without compromising the solicitor’s ability to present the case effectively.
From 370 documents to 69 — and 6 hours to 1
Key Challenges
The legal support team needed to:
- Reduce file preparation time from nearly 6 hours to a manageable duration
- Identify which documents were actually needed versus which were included “just in case”
- Create a standardised process that anyone could follow, including interns
- Reduce the cost in resources — paper, printing, staff time, storage
- Ensure no critical documents were missed when reducing the file size
The Lean Solution
Using the 8-Step Problem-Solving Process with a Kaizen event and Value Stream Mapping:
- Used Value Stream Mapping to map the full current-state process from file request to court-ready file
- Held a Kaizen brainstorming event to surface ideas, prioritised with an Impact/Ease chart
- Established that solicitors should mark important documentation as “brief” and email a list of letters to include
- Required the solicitor or secretary to review and decide what should actually be printed
- Trained an intern on what should always be included — creating a standard
- Reduced the file from 370 to just 69 documents — an 81% reduction in volume
“We provide a highly organised, streamlined and efficient legal service, where planning and productivity results in business excellence.”
— Tracey Solicitors
8-Step Problem-Solving Process
Value Stream Mapping was critical in this project — it made the full file preparation workflow visible for the first time, revealing that the majority of documents included in the file were never referenced.
Problem
Nearly 6 hours to prepare a file for court. 370 documents per file. High cost in time, paper, and staff resources.
Current State
Value Stream Mapped the full process. Identified that most documents were included ‘just in case’ and were never referenced in court.
Target
Reduce preparation time significantly. Reduce document count to only what’s needed. Create a standardised, trainable process.
Root Cause
Kaizen event: no criteria for what to include, no review step, no standard — everything went into the file by default.
Countermeasures
Solicitor marks ‘brief’ items. Secretary reviews what to print. Intern trained on standard inclusions. File reduced to 69 documents.
Implementation
New process trialled on two files. First file: 1 hour. Second file: 1 hour 6 minutes. Consistent, repeatable results.
Evaluation
83% reduction in preparation time (6 hours → 1). 81% reduction in document volume (370 → 69). Significant cost savings.
Standardisation
Process documented. Intern trained. Standard ‘always include’ list created. Can be applied across all case types.
83% faster, 81% fewer documents
The results were immediate and consistent across multiple files:
- First trial file: 1 hour preparation. Down from nearly 6 hours — saving a potential 5 hours of staff time on a single file.
- Second trial file: 1 hour 6 minutes. Confirming the result was repeatable, not a one-off.
- 370 documents reduced to 69. An 81% reduction in file volume — meaning less printing, less paper, less physical storage, and a more focused file for the solicitor.
- Process standardised and trainable. An intern can now follow the standard to prepare files, freeing experienced staff for higher-value work.
- Significant cost savings. Time, paper, printing and storage savings across every file prepared for hearing — compounding across the firm’s caseload.
Learnings
- Value Stream Mapping made the invisible visible — the team had never mapped the full file preparation process before, and doing so revealed waste that had been accepted as normal.
- The biggest reduction came from simply asking “does this document actually need to be in the file?” — a question nobody had systematically asked before.
- Creating a standard “always include” list was more effective than trying to decide case-by-case — it made the process consistent and trainable.
- The fact that many settled cases never use the paper file at all highlights the importance of questioning whether a process is adding value before optimising it.
Question what goes into the file, not just how fast you can build it
This project is a textbook example of eliminating waste at source rather than doing waste faster. The solution wasn’t to prepare 370 documents more efficiently — it was to recognise that 301 of those documents weren’t needed. That shift in thinking, from “how do we speed up the process” to “why are we doing all of this in the first place,” is at the heart of Lean methodology.
LeanTeams has worked with Tracey Solicitors on multiple improvement projects. You may also be interested in: Case Study 1 – Will Generator and Case Study 3 – Centralised Undertakings Register.
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