Custom Soutron legal information portal eliminates silos between different judicial tiers, proving effortless access to cross-jurisdictional rulings.
Ireland’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) is responsible for directing and conducting criminal prosecutions in Ireland. The organisation’s law library supports prosecutors and staff with access to legal information and knowledge resources via their custom Inform Soutron search portal.
Ireland’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) is responsible for directing and conducting criminal prosecutions nationwide. Within the organisation, a compact three-person library team supports more than 300 staff members, including roughly 200 legal professionals, maintaining a 1:100 staff-to-user ratio. To keep pace with heavy organisational demands without expanding headcount, the library relies on Soutron to streamline workflows and deliver seamless access to legal information.
In a legal environment where relevant precedent and cross-jurisdictional rulings are vital, the library uses Soutron’s records tree functionality to link and organise judgments from four distinct court systems into a single, unified structure. Described by Sarah Cleary, ODPP Higher Executive Officer, as “a one-stop shop for all of our Court of Appeal, Central Criminal Court, Circuit Court, and District Court judgments,” this capability eliminates silos between different judicial tiers.
The records tree allows staff and prosecutors to browse, navigate, and connect related case law across multiple court levels effortlessly, creating a cohesive repository that serves as the backbone of the library’s knowledge management strategy.
For an organization where timely access to authoritative legal information is critical, this unified view of judgments helps staff find, understand, and navigate related cases more efficiently while supporting broader knowledge-sharing initiatives across the Office.
“The records tree would probably be the one [Soutron] feature that we would be lost without. It’s [created] sort of a one-stop shop for all of our Court of Appeal, Central Criminal Court, Circuit Court, and District Court judgements. It’s very intuitive”
Sarah Cleary, MLS
Higher Executive Officer
Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ireland
In addition to creating a single, connected repository of judgments spanning the District Court, Circuit Court, Central Criminal Court, and Court of Appeal, enabling prosecutors and staff to efficiently discover related judgment, the ODPP Library uses Soutron to support several strategic and operational priorities:
Law Librarian Paolo Defant joined the office in February 2026, making the ODPP his first experience with Soutron. He was trained by his colleague, Higher Executive Officer Sarah Cleary, supplemented by Soutron’s standard training resources.
Paolo Defant, the ODPP Senior Law Librarian with experience with other systems, had this to say about Soutron when asked how he would describe Soutron to another librarian:
“It just kind of streamlines the library operations and the workflows. As a first experience, it was a very user-friendly interface, both on the user end and on the management side, on the admin side. That’s something that really resonated immediately with me. The support has been great.”
Sarah Cleary, ODPP Higher Executive Officer, who moved into the library from the office’s legal administration unit in late 2022 and recently completed her Master’s in Library and Information Studies, compared Soutron with the legacy case management system she used in her previous role.
“This is like night and day. It’s very intuitive, I find. If you find yourself in one corner of it, you can quickly find your way back. And sometimes it’s [exciting to see] that I can actually do this now, figuring it out [on her own] which is really good.”
With a workforce of over 300 employees, Office of the DPP library services are efficiently delivered by a team of three staff members, a 1:100 staff-to-user ratio. In addition to their Soutron database, information is also spread across folders, drives, spreadsheets, with manual processes to access. To improve information access and knowledge sharing at the Office of the DPP, many initiatives have been undertaken to operate more efficiently, including:
Prosecutors interact directly with the Soutron search portal via Inform, running their own day-to-day searches against the catalogue. Permissions follow a simple, deliberate model: staff can see everything catalogued in the system except the library’s logged queries, which the team keeps private because a query can range from a routine book request to a sensitive legal question.
During the conversation, Paolo reflected on what he viewed as a growing emphasis on transparency and accessibility within the organisation. He also noted that, as a new employee coming from another government library environment, he found the information available on the ODPP website invaluable for understanding the organisation and its work.
He described the library as part of a broader culture focused on sharing knowledge and making information accessible throughout the office. “There’s a greater emphasis on knowledge sharing with all the staff and making information accessible, and a big emphasis on knowledge management as well. The library has always been kind of an instrument to that as well, to that clarity, that transparency.”
The library’s structured approach to managing judgments, legal resources, and information requests helps support broader organisational goals around knowledge sharing, information accessibility, and transparency. By making authoritative information easier to discover and use, the library enables prosecutors and staff to locate the resources they need more efficiently.
The ODPP Library demonstrates how a small specialist team can create significant organizational value through structured legal knowledge management.
With the core judgment repository firmly established through the records tree, the library team is eyeing further operational enhancements. These include adopting the Serials Management module for subscription and invoice tracking toward the end of 2026 or early 2027, exploring search portal visual customisations, and eventually linking cloud-based SharePoint resources directly into Soutron records following an upcoming migration project.
Through smart system utilisation—anchored by the records tree uniting four court systems—the ODPP library continues to prove how a specialist team can drive transparency, accessibility, and efficiency across a major national legal office.
To learn more about the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ireland, visit their website at:
Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ireland
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The DPP Library uses Soutron to manage legal resources, judgments, legislation, research materials, HR documents, and other organisational knowledge assets.
The Records Tree links judgments from multiple court levels into a single structured hierarchy, making it easier for staff to discover related cases and navigate legal information. The DPP library team describes it as a feature they "would be lost without."
The team cites more streamlined cataloguing workflows, intuitive system navigation, improved access to legal resources, easier knowledge sharing, and strong user adoption among both library staff and end users.
