diff --git a/.jules/bolt.md b/.jules/bolt.md
index 02a6e1a2..6093337e 100644
--- a/.jules/bolt.md
+++ b/.jules/bolt.md
@@ -85,3 +85,7 @@
 ## 2026-05-16 - Pre-processing for RAG Retrieval
 **Learning:** In RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems with static or semi-static policy datasets, performing tokenization, regex substitution, and string formatting inside the retrieval loop is a significant bottleneck that scales with the number of policies.
 **Action:** Move all deterministic operations (tokenization, formatting, regex matching prep) to a one-time initialization step to ensure the retrieval hot-path only performs necessary set intersections and similarity calculations.
+
+## 2026-05-17 - Redundant Configuration I/O in Service Initialization
+**Learning:** Instantiating services that read static configuration files from disk on every `__init__` call is a significant performance bottleneck, especially in high-traffic or frequent background task scenarios. This adds unnecessary latency and disk I/O on every request or task execution.
+**Action:** Implement class-level or module-level caching for static configuration files to ensure they are only read and parsed once per process lifetime, significantly reducing initialization overhead.
diff --git a/backend/grievance_service.py b/backend/grievance_service.py
index 01218d9b..36515e9a 100644
--- a/backend/grievance_service.py
+++ b/backend/grievance_service.py
@@ -22,6 +22,9 @@ class GrievanceService:
     Main service for managing grievances, routing, and escalations.
     """
 
+    # Class-level cache to avoid redundant disk I/O when instantiating the service
+    _rules_cache = {}
+
     def __init__(self, rules_config_path: str = "backend/grievance_rules.json"):
         """
         Initialize the grievance service.
@@ -29,8 +32,12 @@ def __init__(self, rules_config_path: str = "backend/grievance_rules.json"):
         Args:
             rules_config_path: Path to the rules configuration file
         """
-        with open(rules_config_path, 'r') as f:
-            self.rules_config = json.load(f)
+        # Optimized: Use class-level cache to avoid reading and parsing the JSON file repeatedly
+        if rules_config_path not in GrievanceService._rules_cache:
+            with open(rules_config_path, 'r') as f:
+                GrievanceService._rules_cache[rules_config_path] = json.load(f)
+
+        self.rules_config = GrievanceService._rules_cache[rules_config_path]
 
         self.routing_service = RoutingService(self.rules_config)
         self.sla_service = SLAConfigService(