Drewry, Gavin

English

ArticlesThe UK civil service employs more than 2000 professionally qualified lawyers to provide legal services – including the provision of legal advice and the conduct of government litigation – to central government. Most of these lawyers work in the Government Legal Service, headed by the Treasury Solicitor, who is answerable to a government minister, the Attorney General (the government’s chief legal advisor). Lawyers, with a wide range of different responsibilities, are to be found throughout the numerous ministries and agencies of central government, and a small number (not categorised as civil servants) are also employed separately by Parliament. The civil service has a strong ‘generalist’ culture, dating back to the 19th century, that tends to relegate ‘specialists’ to a subordinate status in decision making – ‘on tap but not on top’. But although lawyer civil servants are specialists, the manifest importance of legal expertise across the whole range of government activities has given them a uniquely important role – a role that is growing in significance as the UK wrestles with the huge legal challenges of withdrawal from the European Union in the aftermath of the ‘Brexit’ referendum in 2016

Osaka University Knowledge Archive

Lawyers in UK Central Government : Key Specialists in a Generalist Bureaucratic Culture

https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/repo/ouka/all/67740/oulr065-025.pdf

Lawyers in UK Central Government : Key Specialists in a Generalist Bureaucratic Culture

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Osaka University Knowledge Archive

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