For the last five years, the Department of Justice, DOJ, has been working on the Indian residential schools, IRS, litigation. However, only in the past three years has it kept detailed data on the overall work on these files as the significance of this litigation became apparent. Therefore, we are presenting comprehensive information from the last three fiscal years. Prior to this, IRS litigation formed part of the general litigation the Department of Justice conducted on behalf of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and no separate records were kept with respect to the number of full time equivalents, FTEs, working on IRS litigation.
The number of employees working on IRS litigation is based on actual utilization of time spent on IRS files rather than on number of employees since most lawyers work on numerous files throughout the year. One full time equivalent, FTE, is composed of 1,300 billable hours of work per employee per fiscal year.
Table 1: No. of employees working on IRS files in the DOJ (based on FTE utilization)
Table 2: Hours worked on IRS files for DOJ (The actual number of hours worked on IRS litigation is recorded through timekeeping.)
Note A: 2001-02 is as at February 28, 2002.