Service Standards for the Provision of Legal Services in Government

The Department of Justice is committed to delivering high-quality legal advisory, litigation, and legislative and regulatory drafting services in accordance with the following set of common service standards focusing on timeliness, responsiveness, and usefulness.

Service Standards

Timeliness

• We respond in a timely manner to requests for legal services.
• We negotiate and meet mutually acceptable deadlines.

Responsiveness

• We provide timely status updates with respect to our services.

Usefulness

• We provide consistent legal advice that reflects a whole-of-government approach.
• We work with you to identify, explain and mitigate legal risks.
• We provide clear and practical legal advice to support your mandate.
• We prepare draft legislative texts to meet your policy and program objectives.
• We involve you in the development of legal strategy and positions.
• We identify means to prevent and resolve legal disputes at the earliest opportunity.

Performance Measurement

Justice conducts a Client Feedback Survey to obtain feedback from clients on its performance against these service standards. The survey is regularly administered over a two-year cycle.

In addition to gathering formal feedback through the survey, Justice, departments and agencies, informally review and discuss on an ongoing basis the quality of legal services relative to the service standards in order to identify opportunities for service improvements.