Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
November/December 2004, by Delia Venables

Government Legal Service (GLS)
by Victoria Smith, LexisNexis UK

The Government Legal Service (www.gls.gov.uk) provides recruitment, training and networking support to over 1,900 government lawyers across 40 departments and public bodies. The lawyers work in many areas across government covering both public law (such as consent to treatment in NHS, monopolies and mergers and prosecuting benefits fraud) and private law (such as the Official Solicitor acting for young women with learning disabilities whose mothers think they should have sterilisation operations). They also liaise with officials, instruct Parliamentary Counsel in drafting legislation and brief Ministers for Parliamentary debates.

As a result of the many separate areas where government lawyers work, from a single adviser in a government body to the 350 within the Treasury Solicitors Department, the GLS has set up a cross departmental intranet, called the Legal Information Online Network (LION). This intranet draws lawyers together offering information on legal and procedural matters and providing contacts for further information. The site includes specialist legal interest noticeboards covering matters of particular interest, called Action Zones. These include advice and guidance, the GLS Journal and information sources provided by legal and business publishers.

LION is hosted by the Treasury Solicitors and updated by a small team providing technical and design support. It is accessed by over 2,000 lawyers and information managers from various offices in the 40 departments and other locations, for example those working at home and others working on location in Strasbourg.

Procurement

In April 2004 the Treasury Solicitor, on behalf of the Government Legal Service, procured various key information services from LexisNexis UK through the S-CAT approved supplier list (S-CAT is an approved supplier list to the public sector; the process is similar to the approval process law firms complete under the legal services category for working with government). Thus, LexisNexis UK is now an approved supplier under the new category of business and legal information and research services.

Overall, the aims of the procurement were to obtain a comprehensive, flexible, value for money subscription service, compatible with the LION infrastructure. The services we now provide are Halsbury's Laws Direct, Legislation Direct, All England Direct, Employment Law Online, Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, Civil Procedure Online and Current Awareness.

Project LION has provided us with many interesting technical and logistical challenges. To enable people to access the subscription services hosted on our file servers in Woking, we needed to create an authentication method which would identify LION users exclusively, independently of usual subscriptions to other services. This was achieved with the creation of an entirely new authentication package based on their domain address rather than Internet Protocol (IP) address.

Specialised Information

Those government lawyers working in specialist departments of government, such as the Office of the Rail Regulator and Hydrographic Office, need very specific information on their particular areas of law. We provide email alerts covering specific legal content on subject areas in a 660 word legal taxonomy in customised, individual email alerts with newsfeeds customised to replicate the look and feel of LION.

Some cases or policy are particularly high profile in the public eye and the legal advice is therefore required to be accurate and updated frequently. Access to the subscription services on LION are available 24/7 and LexisNexis UK's email alert service can be set to deliver at 7 am with twice daily updates.

The environment of a government lawyer is intellectually demanding and requires the ability to clarify complex ideas, such as serious tax fraud and to understand the context of a legal issue, for example BSE and the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

European law has a bearing on practically every aspect of government law and needs detailed monitoring. Case materials from ECHR, ECJ and Court of First Instance are provided on the information sources with hypertext links into the commentary of key sources such as Halsbury's Laws.

Government lawyers have a unique constitutional role in assisting the government of the day in formulating policies, carrying out decisions and administering public services. We are helping government lawyers react quicker, provide comprehensive briefings and enhance the legal aspects of the Parliamentary process.

Victoria Smith is Business Development Manager, Government, of LexisNexis UK, www.lexisnexis.co.uk.

Email victoria.smith@lexisnexis.co.uk.

Back to Contents.