Using AI is like taking legal advice from a man in a pub. You might come away with some good tips. Though you wouldn’t want to trust his advice without first checking it out. Particularly if you are preparing a case for trial. But so many lawyers seem to do just that. Particularly those still at the learning end. They’re the ones getting caught out. But it is usually their employer who gets the grief.
Think of AI as an advanced search engine. It does more than simply searching out internet content and presenting it to you as a series of links. It goes further by mashing up that content and then reconstituting it as its own work. So is it surprising that AI sometimes gets it wrong? And there’s another thing. Everything downloadable from the internet is somebody else’s intellectual property. So when you are reusing that mashed up content and passing it off as your own work, you are opening yourself up to a damages claim.
Don’t get me wrong. I sometimes use AI myself. But only a starting point. I might ask it to list out some cases relevant to the matter with which I am dealing. I will then go on to the BAILII website and search out those cases and download the PDFs. But sometimes my AI has responded with an answer which I know is wrong. So I will always defer to my own professional judgment. Because that’s what I’m paid to do. And yes – I can always sense when something has been written by AI.
Christmas has come. Shorthold tenants are now sitting tenants. You can live there as long as you want to. Just as long as you pay your rent and are neighbourly. Except if your landlord had already served the section 21 notice on you before the end of April 2026. Then it’s just about waiting to see if possession proceedings are issued before the 1st August 2026 cut off. If those possessions proceedings have been issued, it may then take a couple of weeks before you even find out about it. Because a congested civil court system is going to become even more stretched with thousands of landlords issuing their section 21 claims before the statutory cut off. Then there’s the bailiff’s appointment to carry out the actual eviction – which potentially could take much longer. Because bailiffs are going to be very busy.
Being a sitting tenant does not mean that your continued occupation is guaranteed. Because even under the new rules, a landlord can still initiate an eviction process if they can prove a genuine intention to sell the property with vacant possession. But that’s going to be a long-winded process.
For those landlords who are staying in the market, get a reputable letting agent. Someone who is up to speed with the changes. Even if you have to pay a little bit more for that quality of service They will be the people on whom you will be relying to protect your interests. Between now and the end of May 2026, there is work which they need to attend to, to protect you from big financial penalties.
It’s also going to be a busy time for your local council. Especially their homeless team. Everyone who has received a section 21 eviction notice before the 30th April 2026 cut off is going to need somewhere else to live. But only those former tenants with a ‘priority need’ (for example those with children or a serious health condition) can be guaranteed somewhere to live, even if it’s only bed and breakfast. So there’s going to be lots of business for hoteliers.
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I’m always astonished that any industry still exists in the UK, with the highest energy costs in the world and successive governments which, for as long as I can remember, have been too quick to procure goods and services from abroad, even when it means the loss of UK jobs. Whatever happened to a level playing field? It’s also why I’m encouraged by the Local Government (Exclusion of Non-Commercial Considerations) (England) Order 2026, which allows local authorities to favour either UK companies or those which are locally based, when making procurement decisions. But the new legislation has its limitations:
The ability to favour local industry or that which is UK based only applies to the lowest tier of procurement which does not have to go out to formal tender. This means supplies or services contracts with a value under £207,720 and works contracts which are under £5,193,000
The legislation is permissive. which means that councils are under no obligation to favour local business or that which is UK based. Any council which wishes to use the legislation must update its contract standing orders to allow it to do so and also make clear in any advertisement that bidding is limited to UK companies or those which are locally based
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
BRUCE AND HOLLY 