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Government Departments: Legal Fees

Answer

The Department for Transport (including its seven agencies) uses three categories of lawyers to deliver legal services across a wide range of functions. These are (a) public law (including the preparation of legislation), (b) EU law and (c) international law and commercial law. The in-house team, comprising barristers and solicitors, advises in all these fields. Costs are managed by a variety of means—recruitment and retention of high-calibre lawyers, prioritisation of effort, flexibility of deployment, effective training and effective information management, including use of the Government Legal Service's Legal Information on-line web portal (LION). The department also uses external legal firms, especially in the commercial field, typically where a major project requires the deployment of specialist expertise or where the weight of a project requires a scale of resource that it would not, in either case, be cost effective to handle in-house. The costs of external commercial lawyers are minimised by the use of Government Legal Service procurement frameworks (and a separate DfT mini-framework which further drives cost reduction), strong management of external services and renegotiation of rates with firms where necessary. The department uses the Treasury Solicitor and barristers for its litigation work. DfT also complies with the Attorney-General's rule that only HMG panel barristers may be instructed by the department. This ensures that the department pays only HMG-agreed rates. Only exceptionally does the department go ““off-panel””, and only then with the Attorney-General's approval.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

13131; 732 c156WA

Session

2010-12

Related items

Government Departments: Legal Fees
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Written questions
House of Lords

Subjects

Department for Transport Legal profession Expenditure Legal opinion

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk