I’ve just managed to renew my solicitor’s practising certificate for 2025/2926. For a non-techno like me, it was so much more difficult just to log on to the SRA website to make the application. In previous years I would just put in my log in details and password and then receive a one-time password, which I would then type in. Bingo! I’d only need another 10 minutes to complete the online application, make the payment, and my practising certificate would be on its way. Not this year.
Faced with the dreaded QR code, I spent many hours trying to suss out my cell phone to generate the six digits which would get me into the website. Up to then, my phone’s primary use had been – well – phoning! And perhaps the occasional text message. Whatsapp? Forget it! I watched the ‘ how to log on’ video on the SRA website. Then struggled again.
It’s pure luck that at the end of my road there is a small computer shop where I was able to get help to navigate through the technical barriers and complete my application. Well worth the £20 I paid the guy for his trouble. But it means that I won’t have to worry about that for another year.
As someone who has spent more than 30 years of a legal career working with local authority in-house teams, the statistics contained in this report ring true for me. But behind every statistic, there is a story, which I now attempt to explain from my own experience and discussions with others.
It is not about being cheap and cheerful.
Providing ‘more for less’ requires an understanding of what a corporate client really wants from an in-house legal service. It is not about being cheap and cheerful. If that were the case, no legal work would ever be outsourced. A corporate client wants value for money. But not only value for money. They also want a quality service which lifts the burden from their own shoulders and provides a timely turnaround. And a corporate client is prepared to pay more for that type of service. For me, the benchmark comparison for a good in-house team should be that which the client could obtain from a private sector firm of equivalent size, expertise and resource. What is also important to a corporate client is the added value which only an in-house legal team can provide. An on-site presence. An understanding of the client’s ‘business’. Making yourself part of the client ‘team’. Presenting to elected members. Navigating the council’s constitution. Dealing with those tiresome freedom of Information requests and registration of assets of community value.
It’s about the technology
For me, having the right technology and systems in place are key to providing a client with more for less. Because it is that technology and the systems which go with it, which creates the environment in which fee earners are able to work quickly and efficiently and which, in turn, produces lower unit cost. A problem for legal services managers is that many of these systems are not under their direct control. All they can do is report a failure and wait for someone else to come and fix it. Walking up and down looking for a printer that works and then lining up behind two other fee earners, is hardly an efficient use of lawyer time. Some of that technology is already free to download and use on any modern computer, such as voice dictation.
I’ve noticed that local authority legal teams always appear several years behind their private sector counterparts when it comes to adopting new technology. Whilst there may be exceptions, I would think it safe to assume that most local authorities have not yet adopted the electronic signing and attestation of documents which is now the standard in most private practice. The adoption of such systems is not expensive and saves money as well as time. Using DocuSign not only avoids the need for a corporate seal and a wet ink signature, it also avoids the need to prepare and circulate hard copy engrossments and can bring forward a completion by more than a week.
Staff Recruitment and Retention
Whilst salary levels for local authority lawyers are significantly lower than those working in private practice, what must be factored in is the Local Government Pension Scheme. Whilst this final salary scheme may no longer be as generous as it once was, it is still better than anything you are likely to get elsewhere.
Headline locum hourly pay rates may be higher than the equivalent salaries paid to permanent staff but remember that from that hourly headline rate, anyone working off payroll has to fund the costs of their own employment,before any money can go into their pocket. This will include employers’ National Insurance, rolled up holiday pay, and making their own pension arrangements. Any tax advantages which staff might once have enjoyed from working off-payroll disappeared with IR35. So maybe the pay difference is not as significant as it first appears. Even the 15% commission paid to the locum agency is not money for nothing, as it covers the administration and due diligence which would otherwise have to be carried out by the council’s own HR and payroll teams
By contrast, the locum market enables legal services managers to quickly upsize or downsize to meet day-to-day operational requirements without the paraphernalia of a long-winded recruitment or redundancy process. For a good locum, the issue is not how long a particular assignment lasts but whether there will be something to move on to after it has ended. It is about personal marketability. The ability to quickly adapt to a team’s requirements and make a real contribution to getting the work done. The first thing I notice when looking at a locum CV is the length of previous assignments and, more importantly, whether any of those previous assignments have been repeated or extended. If the answer is, ‘none’, that for me sends its own message. When it comes to ‘diva tendencies’, the worst locums I have come across are the semi-retired grandees. The former chief executives coming new to transactional work but who refuse to be told.
Retention of good staff has always been a problem for me, much more than the permanent recruitment of new staff. I believe it’s because of the limited opportunities which local authorities provide for internal promotion, where every opportunity has to be advertised to the World and where even the best candidate can be pipped at the post by someone who may be less able but whose answers score better in a structured interview. Then, the only way for that internal candidate to achieve promotion is to adopt a scatter gun approach, by sending multiple applications to other local authorities until someone bites. A system which is hardly conducive to corporate loyalty.
Getting into management.
I found it disappointing that only 38% of local government lawyers aspire to management, even though leadership is a valuable life-skill which can only be learned by doing. Management is your chance to make a difference. To put in place the changes you always wanted to make but never had the seniority to make. A chance to experiment with your own ideas instead of implementing someone else’s. Taking credit when something goes well and responsibility when it does not. Something I have always tried to do when taking up a new management’s role is to repair some of those client relationships which had previously become soured.
Third party income
Something not mentioned at all during the survey is the opportunities for a legal team to help meet its budget by maximizing third party income. The costs of many transactions can be loaded onto the party receiving the benefit of that transaction. Examples include section 106 planning agreements; highway agreements; statutory lease extensions; leasehold sub-dealings, such as licences to assign or underlet. Licences for alteration or change of use. In fact, any transaction carried out at the request of another party.
Whilst an in-house legal team cannot make a profit on such transactions, it is important they are at least cost- neutral for the local authority. It is about accurately assessing the amount of work likely to be involved and seeking a professional undertaking for that amount. And then being able to work within that quoted budget so that there is no cost overrun.
On a final note, what I have always valued from my work with in-house legal teams is the general culture of courtesy which has always existed between local government officers at every level.
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V.Charles Ward is a Senior Property Lawyer with HB Public Law and author of Local Authority Conveyancing: Law and Practice (UK)
First Published in Local Government Lawyer – August 2025
The Law Society Gazette recently reported on a case where a pupil barrister had mistakenly cited fake cases as part of her legal submissions in a case involving a local authority’s duties towards a homeless man. She had found the cases through her internet research and did not realise that the cases which she had cited did not actually exist. They had been entirely made up by an artificial intelligence program even though they appeared to her to be genuine. The result was a wasted costs order not only against her but also against the Law Centre which had instructed her. Add to that the reputational damage against both as well as the possibility of professional sanction. That’s not to say that artificial intelligence should never be used as a research tool. Only that it is a professional responsibility to carry out the follow-up due diligence to ensure that what is cited is absolutely correct.
It’s important to recognise what exactly AI is. As far as I can see, AI, in this situation, is nothing more than an advanced search engine which not only identifies data but then goes on to mash it up and serve up something else out of its components. It’s like me going down to my local breakers yard and collecting bits and pieces to build my own car. I’m sure that if I asked AI to write my next Eurovision hit in the style of Elton John, it would present to me a rehash of Lulu’s ‘Boom Bang Bang’. Which brings me onto another controversial issue. Because if I then go on to use that content as part of my Eurovision entry, I will then be breaching copyright. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t use AI in my work, including the writing of this article.
As I was aware that this was not the first instance of fake cases being cited by AI, I asked my Gemini search engine to find me some other instances where lawyers have been caught out using fake cases generated by AI. It came up with the following cases: New York Aviation Injury Claim (Mata v Avianca 2023); Morgan v Morgan (Wyoming); UK Tax Tribunal Case (Harber v Commissioner for HM Revenue and Customs) which involved a self-represented tax payer.
Have I checked any of those cases out before including reference to them in this article? No I haven’t. But neither am I intending to cite them in any court proceedings anytime soon. So I’m afraid that you will just have to trust me.
One of the reasons given by the pupil barrister for her use of AI generated cases was that she did not have direct access to Lexus Nexus or the White Book, which contains the civil practice rules. In those circumstances my own ‘go to’ would be the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, which provides a free on-line legal resource for current case law. It also makes it incumbent for anyone acting for an opponent to also check out case law provided to them by another party, just to make sure that it actually exists.
It seems strange that in today’s corporate world, the only people to have full secretarial support are those who are least likely to need it. They are the captains of industry who spend most of their time in meetings instead of sitting in front of a screen pushing out documentation in volume. For the rest of us, it’s about making the best of what limited support is available to us. One of the positives coming out of the covid lockdowns was a permanent change in working habits, which means that we can do more of our work from the back bedroom instead of traipsing through the morning and evening rush hours. Who would want to go back to that? It was also fortuitous that this change in working habits coincided with technical developments which enable us to meet on teams at the moment’s notice instead of taking an afternoon out of the office to meet face to face. So what has all this got to do with New Year’s resolutions? Just this! In conveyancing, time is money. A delayed completion often means a delayed rental stream or a delayed capital receipt. And everyone loses.
If progress on a transaction stalls completely, other things will supervene and it will begin to unravel. One of the issues I have with traditional time recording is that it rewards inefficiency, with the slowest most inexperienced fee earner charging out the most time for a transaction. When it should be all about unit-cost, meaning that the faster you are able to work without compromising on quality or accuracy, the better value you are providing to your corporate client. In this post, I provide suggestions for ten New Year work-resolutions which can help you become one of the most efficient conveyancers in your team, simply by making the best use of the resources which are available to you . Here they are:
Dictate! Dictate Dictate! All computers which are Windows 10 and above, have a voice dictation facility. But you will need to find it and enable it. Voice dictation is improving all the time but is still far from perfect. Unlike a secretary, automated voice dictation cannot interpret what you have said. It will simply transcribe what it thinks you have said. So if I dictate the word, ‘ comma’, it will tell me to ‘Call my Mum’. If I say ‘draft’, as in document, it will give me the draught which is blowing in through the open window behind me. So why do I use voice dictation? Because even with its many faults, it is still three times quicker than typing everything out longhand.
Purchase a wired mouse, a wired keyboard, a wide-screen monitor and a wired headset which you are going to use if you are going to dictate. Unless you have micro fingers, don’t try doing all your work on the tiny keyboard which is attached to your laptop. Invest in a wide screen monitor so you don’t have to squint. Using a wide screen also makes it easier to proofread documentation and reduces the risk of mistakes.
Take an interest in legal developments, even if they don’t directly relate to your work. If you are working in a bubble, it is too easy to miss the big changes which are happening in mainstream conveyancing. Subscribe to an online newsletter like ‘Today’s Conveyancer,’ which is aimed at the high street practitioner.
Take time to get to know your corporate clients and learn what they really want from an in-house legal service. It’s not about being ‘cheap and cheerful’. Instead of huddling together with other lawyers, try to become part of the client team.
Be serious about meeting your financial targets, even if colleagues are not meeting theirs.
The 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. core hours slot is sacrosanct. Nothing must be allowed to get in the way of chargeable work. Try to keep training and other distractions out of those core hours.
Be prepared to innovate and discover ways to improve productivity. Set up templates and standardise wherever possible. Don’t send out documentation in draft if you can send out an engrossment.
Look for ways to raise your own professional profile. Remember that meeting continuous professional development (CPD) requirements need not only involve being a passive listener. You can also earn points by presenting training to clients and prospective clients and raise your own profile in the process.
Have confidence in your own professional judgement. And be prepared to provide your client with clear and robust advice. If you don’t have confidence in your own professional judgement, why should anybody else have confidence in you?
Never pass up an opportunity to get into management, even if it’s only for a few months to cover somebody’s maternity leave. Management experience does not only look good on your CV. Leadership is also a valuable life skill which can only be learned by doing. And if you go into management, make sure that you look, act, and sound like a manager, because it will affect the way other people react to you.
Updated guidance for the 34,500 in-house solicitors practising in England and Wales, re-states how those solicitors should respond to the challenges of working for a corporate employer, particularly where employer-demands conflict with the general professional responsibilities which apply to all UK lawyers. Published 18 November, 2024 under the heading, ‘Dedicated Guidance Issued to Support In-House Solicitors’, it provides advice on how to identify and deal with potential conflicts of interest as well as client confidentiality. It also provides advice to corporate employers on how to manage in-house solicitors in a way which does not compromise their professional responsibilities. But there is a limit as to how much information you can put in a couple of dozen pages.
The opening chapters of Local Authority Conveyancing Law and Practice UK. also deals with the same subject matter, but in much greater detail. It addresses the circumstances when a practising certificate is required as well as issues relating to anti-money laundering; professional training; avoiding conflicts of interest and client confidentiality. But whilst the SRA guidance is written for all in-house solicitors, Local Authority Conveyancing Law and Practice focuses on that a tiny proportion of solicitors forming part of an in-house conveyancing team.
It also deals with the challenges facing local authority conveyancing teams, which now exist in a competitive environment where nothing can be taken for granted. It explains what a corporate client really wants from an in-house team, which is not about being cheap and cheerful. The book will also encourage you to look seriously at any opportunities for getting into management. Because management experience does not only look good on a CV. It is also a valuable life skill. But no local authority conveyancing book would be complete without a raft of reference material as well as practical tips on how to manage a conveyancing transaction when you don’t have access to a client account.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 