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Helping the government to govern well, within the rule of law, and across the country. Christopher Bates offers practical guidance for self-employed barristers thinking of making the move
My brief for this article is to provide practical guidance for any barristers interested in moving to the Government Legal Department (GLD). By way of background, I was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 2016 and I undertook pupillage in 2018 in London. My practice was entirely in criminal defence. Around the time of COVID-19, I left London and moved to Leeds. I also took a short career break before returning to practice with the GLD in 2023. So, moving to the GLD from chambers is exactly what I did and is one of the best professional decisions I have ever made.
I’m going to start with an overview of the structure of GLD so you know what you might be getting into, before moving on to relevant skills to be a successful government lawyer, and then giving some practical tips if you do want to apply.
GLD is a large organisation employing 2,307 lawyers – 379 of whom are located outside of central London – as well as the fantastic support staff GLD relies upon to function, and our legal officers and legal trainees. GLD is split into four divisions with each division having roughly six or seven sub-divisions, each dividing down into teams responsible for specific streams of work or types of litigation.
A reductive summary, but one I embrace for this article, is that the majority of the lawyers who work for GLD will describe themselves as either litigators or advisory lawyers. Advisory lawyers are responsible for providing advice to ministers and their departments, helping to take the government’s policy ideas and shape them into law, as well as helping them take decisions that are consistent with rule of law. Litigators, well, that’s more or less what it says on the tin; when someone brings a claim against the government, we act for the relevant minister or department.
I currently sit within the Litigation Group where I am in one of our public law teams. My day job is nearly entirely made up of defending judicial reviews brought against a range of departments and agencies.
The skills you need to be an effective government lawyer are very similar to those you need in both self-employed and employed practice. A key difference is in how those skills are used. The time decision-makers and policy-makers have is incredibly limited. You need to be able to distil your advice down so that it is brief, but precise, giving them exactly what they need to know; no more, no less. This is true for both written and oral advice. As I tell a lot of new joiners, brevity is a virtue.
Another big difference between self-employed practice and employed practice is that you are part of a much bigger team, and you need to lean into that. As counsel, you will have people you can go to for help (such as in chambers), but at the core, you are still that ‘lone gunslinger’, able to call the shots as you see them. In GLD, you are part of a much bigger project. What you do in your case might have serious ‘cross-cutting’ implications that extend beyond what’s immediately in front of you. Though this could feel restrictive, it’s actually quite liberating. There are hundreds of lawyers and support staff you can go to for help. On complex matters, there are clear chains of escalation and management to take things from your work in the trenches, all the way to the top. It makes for a very supportive environment – and when you go on holiday, you actually go on holiday.
This point is doubly true in the regions. My team is a national one with approximately 40 team members. Of that, we have near half a dozen or so in my office in Leeds. I don’t always get to see my immediate colleagues, but on any given day, I sit with other lawyers doing all sorts of really interesting work from across government. What this means is that I have a sounding board that I can bounce ideas off and get a range of perspectives from people with different priorities. Using those skills we all have, I cut that down to what’s relevant and use that to formulate top quality legal advice (if I don’t say so myself).
Transferable skills! I have beaten the drum in this piece and I am going to bang it especially hard now: we are looking for transferable skills – i.e. what you have done in your practice and how you can utilise those skills in a career at GLD. I think, not to be critical, that this is something that members of the self-employed Bar can often fall down on, and is a failing we see in panel counsel applications as well.
You have great skills, but don’t necessarily sell them in a way that is going to gain traction. It’s all well and good to say, ‘I was led by Mrs Snooks KC in the Court of Appeal in the matter of X v Y [2023] which is now the leading authority for…’ but that doesn’t tell the person marking your application anything. I know what it means, and I can certainly imagine the hard work that went into getting that result, but it’s going to get a very low score as it doesn’t actually say anything about what you can do. We want to know what you did, how you did it, and how you’d do it again – but for us.
Linked to that is a knowledge of the success profiles. These are profiles that centrally produced and relevant to all civil servants. Identify the grade you are going in for (usually 6 or 7) and what skills are relevant. You can then highlight what skills you have and draw them out with examples.
Knowing the Civil Service Code and its broad strokes is also critical. Lawyers are, of course, bound by our own code of ethics, but as government lawyers, we are also bound by the Civil Service Code. Following it every day ensures that we reach the high standards that are expected of public servants. Having a familiarity with it before you start your application, and before you get to interview, will really help. It will give you a feel for how we operate and what it means to be a civil servant. You can use that to help formulate your answers.
What we do as government lawyers is complex and challenging. We are at the very forefront of developing the law, and very often, actually physically writing it. It’s fast-paced and exciting. You cannot do what we do anywhere else in the country, but, if you join us, you can do it, anywhere in the country.
Pictured top: The Government Legal Department employs over 2,300 lawyers across offices in Leeds, Manchester and Bristol as well as London. Students participating in a GLD diversity scheme last summer were able to attend in multiple locations.
Christopher Bates is a lawyer at the Government Legal Department. He currently works in the Public Law team for the Ministry of Justice and is based in GLD’s Leeds office.
My brief for this article is to provide practical guidance for any barristers interested in moving to the Government Legal Department (GLD). By way of background, I was called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 2016 and I undertook pupillage in 2018 in London. My practice was entirely in criminal defence. Around the time of COVID-19, I left London and moved to Leeds. I also took a short career break before returning to practice with the GLD in 2023. So, moving to the GLD from chambers is exactly what I did and is one of the best professional decisions I have ever made.
I’m going to start with an overview of the structure of GLD so you know what you might be getting into, before moving on to relevant skills to be a successful government lawyer, and then giving some practical tips if you do want to apply.
GLD is a large organisation employing 2,307 lawyers – 379 of whom are located outside of central London – as well as the fantastic support staff GLD relies upon to function, and our legal officers and legal trainees. GLD is split into four divisions with each division having roughly six or seven sub-divisions, each dividing down into teams responsible for specific streams of work or types of litigation.
A reductive summary, but one I embrace for this article, is that the majority of the lawyers who work for GLD will describe themselves as either litigators or advisory lawyers. Advisory lawyers are responsible for providing advice to ministers and their departments, helping to take the government’s policy ideas and shape them into law, as well as helping them take decisions that are consistent with rule of law. Litigators, well, that’s more or less what it says on the tin; when someone brings a claim against the government, we act for the relevant minister or department.
I currently sit within the Litigation Group where I am in one of our public law teams. My day job is nearly entirely made up of defending judicial reviews brought against a range of departments and agencies.
The skills you need to be an effective government lawyer are very similar to those you need in both self-employed and employed practice. A key difference is in how those skills are used. The time decision-makers and policy-makers have is incredibly limited. You need to be able to distil your advice down so that it is brief, but precise, giving them exactly what they need to know; no more, no less. This is true for both written and oral advice. As I tell a lot of new joiners, brevity is a virtue.
Another big difference between self-employed practice and employed practice is that you are part of a much bigger team, and you need to lean into that. As counsel, you will have people you can go to for help (such as in chambers), but at the core, you are still that ‘lone gunslinger’, able to call the shots as you see them. In GLD, you are part of a much bigger project. What you do in your case might have serious ‘cross-cutting’ implications that extend beyond what’s immediately in front of you. Though this could feel restrictive, it’s actually quite liberating. There are hundreds of lawyers and support staff you can go to for help. On complex matters, there are clear chains of escalation and management to take things from your work in the trenches, all the way to the top. It makes for a very supportive environment – and when you go on holiday, you actually go on holiday.
This point is doubly true in the regions. My team is a national one with approximately 40 team members. Of that, we have near half a dozen or so in my office in Leeds. I don’t always get to see my immediate colleagues, but on any given day, I sit with other lawyers doing all sorts of really interesting work from across government. What this means is that I have a sounding board that I can bounce ideas off and get a range of perspectives from people with different priorities. Using those skills we all have, I cut that down to what’s relevant and use that to formulate top quality legal advice (if I don’t say so myself).
Transferable skills! I have beaten the drum in this piece and I am going to bang it especially hard now: we are looking for transferable skills – i.e. what you have done in your practice and how you can utilise those skills in a career at GLD. I think, not to be critical, that this is something that members of the self-employed Bar can often fall down on, and is a failing we see in panel counsel applications as well.
You have great skills, but don’t necessarily sell them in a way that is going to gain traction. It’s all well and good to say, ‘I was led by Mrs Snooks KC in the Court of Appeal in the matter of X v Y [2023] which is now the leading authority for…’ but that doesn’t tell the person marking your application anything. I know what it means, and I can certainly imagine the hard work that went into getting that result, but it’s going to get a very low score as it doesn’t actually say anything about what you can do. We want to know what you did, how you did it, and how you’d do it again – but for us.
Linked to that is a knowledge of the success profiles. These are profiles that centrally produced and relevant to all civil servants. Identify the grade you are going in for (usually 6 or 7) and what skills are relevant. You can then highlight what skills you have and draw them out with examples.
Knowing the Civil Service Code and its broad strokes is also critical. Lawyers are, of course, bound by our own code of ethics, but as government lawyers, we are also bound by the Civil Service Code. Following it every day ensures that we reach the high standards that are expected of public servants. Having a familiarity with it before you start your application, and before you get to interview, will really help. It will give you a feel for how we operate and what it means to be a civil servant. You can use that to help formulate your answers.
What we do as government lawyers is complex and challenging. We are at the very forefront of developing the law, and very often, actually physically writing it. It’s fast-paced and exciting. You cannot do what we do anywhere else in the country, but, if you join us, you can do it, anywhere in the country.
Pictured top: The Government Legal Department employs over 2,300 lawyers across offices in Leeds, Manchester and Bristol as well as London. Students participating in a GLD diversity scheme last summer were able to attend in multiple locations.
Helping the government to govern well, within the rule of law, and across the country. Christopher Bates offers practical guidance for self-employed barristers thinking of making the move
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