Government Legal Service

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The Government Legal Service (GLS) is an umbrella group comprising around two thousand qualified lawyers working as civil servants in around thirty UK Government departments.

The Treasury Solicitor (currently Jonathan Jones) is also the Head of the Government Legal Service. GLS lawyers are mostly employed by the Government Legal Department, although based in other government departments, with some being directly employed by the department in which they work. The GLS brand is used primarily for recruitment purposes and offers training and support to GLS lawyers. The GLS Secretariat supports the work of lawyers across the GLS by providing central library services and for an intranet system, Legal Information Online Network, or LION, which can be accessed by all government lawyers, and gives access to commercial legal databases and information and articles relevant to government legal work.

Lawyers in the Government Legal Service:

• Instruct Parliamentary Counsel to draft almost all United Kingdom primary legislation.
• Draft the vast majority of statutory instruments and secondary legislation in the UK.
• Ensure European Union law is correctly implemented into UK law
• Advise departments of the United Kingdom Government on the formulation and implementation of policy
• Provide litigation services to departments of the United Kingdom Government and the wider public sector

There are separate but similar structures in the devolved administrations – the Government Legal Service for Scotland and the Government Legal Service for Northern Ireland.

External links

• Government Legal Service official website