Damian Boote is the Practice Manager in the Legal Services department at Greater Manchester Police (GMP). The department, with around 50 members of staff, has a wide range of tasks, including: defending civil claims brought against the force, handling motor insurance claims and employment tribunals, dealing with civil preventative orders in the Magistrate's Courts, representation at inquests and judicial review work. Damian is in charge of the smooth running of the department, including the management of resources, training, financial, and IT related matters. He also manages the LexisNexis subscription for the department.
Saving money with digital transformation
The GMP Legal Services department subscribes to both LexisLibrary and LexisPSL, primarily making use of the former. Harnessing a digital resource means that money can be saved on hard copy legal texts. Additionally, Damian says that access to a remote resource has improved efficiency and reduced the need for trips to the office - particularly important during the pandemic with its successive lockdowns.
“Reducing the spend on books by subscribing to LexisNexis means that we can divert the book budget to other areas of the department. Furthermore, providing access to LexisLibrary for our staff at home means they don’t need to come into the office just to pick up a book or make a photocopy. Having all the necessary resources at their fingertips improves efficiency, cuts out unnecessary travel and leads to time savings.”
Staying up-to-date with email alerts
Damian has received some excellent feedback from his team on their experience of using LexisNexis. Praise has been given to the email updates on specific areas of law, with one colleague saying that their: “favourite element of the system is the current awareness briefings, which they receive on a daily basis by email. These provide a brief summary of new legislation along with commencement dates, which helps with the compilation of an internal GMP newsletter which includes updates of any changes to legislation, along with any forthcoming laws.”
Aside from helping the force to stay on top of relevant regulatory developments, LexisLibrary enables GMP research staff to quickly find specific legislation or case law relevant to their work.
“The search facilities for legislation and case law are very much self-explanatory — you just need to enter a few key terms into the search box and you’ll be able to find exactly what you’re looking for.”
“The quality of the content is excellent and all the relevant materials are in one place: Acts of Parliament, statutory instrument updates, case law, and commentary. There’s no need to go anywhere else for research.”
Great customer service and helpful training
Whenever help is required from the customer support team at LexisNexis, Damian has been impressed by the speed of their response and their ability to resolve any problems.
“The response times to any queries are fast, and I have found that LexisNexis customer support can generally sort any issues on the same day - sometimes even within the hour.”
Additionally, the LexisNexis training sessions have helped the GMP Legal Services team to realise the full potential of the resources of LexisLibrary and LexisPSL.
“The training provided by LexisNexis was brilliant. I never knew we had so much access to so much content! The training session was really useful and I would highly recommend it to anyone in legal services.”
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