Ottawa’s justice department racked up more than half a billion dollars in billable legal hours last year, even as internal reviews show thousands of cases were lost or settled after extensive work had already been done.Blacklock's Reporter says an internal audit says lawyers and paralegals at Justice Canada handled roughly 43,000 active litigation files in the 2023–24 fiscal year, up from about 40,000 the year before. Nearly 1,000 federal counsels and 283 paralegals were involved, with litigation services accounting for about 69% of all legal work performed for other government departments.Total spending on billable hours, including payments to outside counsel, reached $567.2 million. That figure represents a 12% increase compared with 2018, though the audit offered no explanation for the jump.The findings follow earlier evaluations raising concerns about efficiency and unnecessary costs. A 2020 review of litigation services found many civil cases were settled late in the process, after federal lawyers had already billed significant hours. .About 44% of pre-trial settlements occurred only after examination for discovery, a stage that typically involves extensive preparation and expense.That evaluation also suggested Ottawa relies too heavily on court proceedings instead of alternative dispute resolution. Sixteen percent of federal lawyers surveyed said the department never or rarely uses tools such as mediation or arbitration, while another 27% said improvements were needed.Auditors reviewed tens of thousands of lawsuits handled between 2015 and 2019 and found that 58,045 cases never went to trial, instead being lost or settled. In a typical year, the federal government paid out more than $405 million in settlements and court awards to successful litigants..“About half of files are settled,” the evaluation noted, often after thousands of hours have already been billed, meaning “substantial resources have been devoted to the file.”Justice Canada lawyers bill an estimated 1.29 million hours annually. In 2016, cabinet struck a committee led by then-fisheries minister Dominic LeBlanc to examine the financial and legal consequences of the federal government’s civil litigation strategy.No reforms followed. No committee report was ever released publicly.
