25 years of partnerships: Discussions with senior leaders

Bill Hull: Hi, my name is Bill Hull.

I'm a partner and Head of Government and Public Services here at national law firm TLT. I am delighted to be joined today by Sarah Goom. Sarah is the Director General for the Government Legal Department, Commercial with Trade and International Group.

The pretext of this conversation is anniversary. It's the 25th anniversary of TLT, which handily coincides with GLD's and 10th anniversary. Like TLT, of course, there was a history of government lawyers before GLD's creation, and I think we've almost been working together now for 10 years as well. So that's another anniversary. But I wonder, Sarah, if you could remind us of the purpose of bringing GLD into existence and 10 years down the line, what's gone well and what is there still to do?

Sarah Goom: Mmm, great question.

Well, congratulations on your anniversary. As you said, we've just hit our 10th. 

And essentially before we had GLD, we had 24 separate legal teams, a legal team based in each government department, employed and on the terms and conditions of that department and very much integrated with that department but not necessarily integrated with each other.

So just very briefly, we came together in 2015, not long after we faced first Brexit and then COVID, which brought about just unprecedented challenges really for government and for the government legal department.

And I think it's almost no exaggeration to say we would not have been able to to respond to those challenges were it not for our ability to move people flexibly to work together on interconnected issues in the way that we were able to because we had become government, the government legal department. And I think we've really built on those experiences.

So a couple of things that we've created, which I think wouldn't have been possible before, we have what we call our rapid response team, which is a pool of lawyers who are volunteers, but who can be moved around GLD to surge into particular priorities. And that would have simply been impossible.

And that we’re all employed by different government departments and we also have a statutory instrument hub, which is a shared resource at the heart of GLD, which provides absolute expertise and experience in statutory instrument drafting but can be deployed across government. A drafter there might be working on something from the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Transport at the same time, which would never have been possible before. So that's some of the advantages.

I'm also really keen to point out actually the advantages for our people in working for an organisation that has that range of legal work because it's something I'm super proud of.

I'm really glad that this provides fantastic opportunities for people to move between different expertise, between different legal contexts, but also to have career pathways in the same sort of profession.

So one of the things I'm super proud of because it has started in my area, is that we have career pathways for trade lawyers.

So you can move seamlessly whilst doing a trade law career, having that as your sort of backbone. You can move between the Department of Business and Trade, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural affairs, Department of Science, Innovation and Technology or even the Treasury, all by staying within a government trade law career pathway.

We've now got offices in Bristol, Leeds, Manchester...

I don't think that would have been possible whilst we were a separate organisation because in those offices all of our lawyers depend, regardless of which bit of the department they're based in, all sit together and they make those really buzzy, stimulating places to work.

Bill Hull: So I've actually been reflecting on the same question for TLT and looked back to 25 years ago as to what the launch messages were in 2000 and “together is better” was the core TLT strategy launch messaging in 2000, the context being of course the merger of two Bristol based law firms, the T and the LT. And obviously that speaks as much to our people as to our clients.

But for clients we felt it was really important too, because by doubling the size we felt we had more expertise, more capacity, more investment capability.

And while now we're 10 times, I think, the size now that we were on merger, this remains the rationale for our growth: can we be more relevant to our clients and to the industries and sectors that we focus on?

And for our people, it's really exciting to be able to give them access to more interesting work and to test themselves professionally.

Sarah Goom: And I'm glad you mentioned clients actually, because I didn't have chance to mention the benefit for clients too.

But I really think that having all of our lawyers in one joined up organisation really drives our ability to provide really joined up advice to government.

And I think over the last 18 months in particular, that's really come to the forefront with the government's mission-based approach, the recognition that society is really complex now.

The kinds of challenges that the government faces are really cross cutting.

They're not solvable by one department alone.

And so we often find that that government lawyers working together in a really flexible joined up way helps our clients.

We can help our clients see the connections between different areas.

Bill Hull: So I wanted to talk a bit about the TLT and the GLD relationship.

So GLD are of course the primary advisors to central government, external law firms are there to give subject matter expertise, provide resource and resilience where that's necessary. This could make for a very transactional relationship. But you've been keen, very keen, not just to develop but require that partnership ethos to that relationship. And I wondered why is that partnership relationship important  to GLD and what do you see as the building blocks to it, and are there any limits to it?

Sarah Goom: Really good question. And I think it goes without saying that our relationship, our partnership relationship with all of our legal firms is really important to us.

We've shared with those panel firms our own strategic resourcing principles which we've developed over the last 18 months or so. And those reflect our aim to deliver for government within GLD.

All the legal work, which our deep government expertise, our public law skills, our knowledge and understanding of the policy context mean that we're best placed to to deliver for government.

But we absolutely recognise that there are specialisms that we don't have. And frankly we're never going to be able to build those specialisms.

And we also recognise that you bring commercial flavour, A richer commercial perspective that you gain from working with other clients, which we just don't have in government.

So all of those things mean that, you know, I think we play to our strengths. We work together and we really see us doing that.

And so just in my area, you and I have recently talked about the Home Office Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme where TLT have given us huge insight and assistance and similarly the Synergy shared services programme as well. So that's, you know, when we look to you for all of that really good commercial nous.

Now I think it's worth being frank that I think you touched on it too. We sometimes need to instruct panel firms where we don't have the capacity or the resilience to cover all of government's work, even when we would really like to. And we feel that it does fall to our experience. So I think inquiry work is a really good example of that. It's great work, but we just haven't had the capacity to do it.

And we've been very pleased to share that work and work in absolute partnership with you guys to deliver that kind of thing. And you know, I think you'll be seeing more of that.

And what we're absolutely keen to do is that where we do bring in our external partners that rather than us sort of chucking it over the fence or allowing our clients to instruct you directly, we will be there in partnership working together to ensure that we're really hitting those value for money and quality targets for government.

And just actually, before I finish up, I've talked about the legal side of things, but the other thing that we really appreciate about working in partnership with our panel firms and with TLT in particular, is you're often on the front foot ahead of us on things like tech.

So I know that Richard Cornish, our Chief Operating Officer has really benefited from talking to you about practice management systems, about legal project management, a whole range of things where you're way ahead of us and we've really benefited from your expertise.

Bill Hull: Well, that's, that's great to hear.

I'm not sure there was a term Co-partnering before we did it with GLD, you know, now everyone is doing it, but that real collaboration, sharing of resource and expertise, learning and sharing those learnings, has been so valuable for us.

So I wanted Sarah to touch on, if I may, some of our personal formative experiences as professionals, because we are all formed by our experience and and sometimes painful lessons that we have to learn along the way. And I just wondered if you had perhaps one or two examples that you could point to that you used to illustrate the demands of the job and the correct approach to adopt.

Sarah Goom: I'm afraid I'm going to duck your invitation to give a personal example. But I wanted to think about the types of situations that are particularly challenging for new lawyers and the themes that I sort of take from my recollections. And for me, it's about about two things really, being courageous and being constructive.

So I think it is really difficult as a junior lawyer to be courageous with clients, to give the advice that they don't want to hear. And thinking about my lawyers, you know, sometimes quite early on in your career, that can mean giving advice directly to a minister. And I do not underestimate how difficult that is. It somehow doesn't even get any easier.

So I think that GLD’s or the Attorney General's risk guidance which GLD started to use first of all, and I think is now quite widely used including and particularly by our panel firms. I think is really helpful in that regard because it gives a consistent, authoritative and structured way to take a decision-maker through legal risk. It's really clear that it's the decision-makers decision and what we do is to provide advice on what type, what kind of risk they are taking so that they are equipped to take that decision.

And always having thought that through and being ready to provide that, that for me, is a good lawyer, courageous, constructive.

Bill Hull: But having that courage, having that jeopardy, actually, of putting yourself in that position is extremely valuable.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about social value, because delivery of social value in the work of all suppliers to government and the public sector has been a huge development in recent years.

We've seen it move from the theoretical to the practical and actual and something that was very separate from the services that were provided to something now that's integral to it.

And as a recipient and participant in those social value initiatives, I’m just interested from your perspective where you've seen it work best and to have most impact, and what are your plans within GLD as to where it can go next?

Sarah Goom: Well, I think you know that social value has long been a priority for government and for GLD as part of government and it's firmly embedded in our practice, but also in the framework in which we work and in which we work together.

So as you know, the recent re-procurement of the legal panel for government, we asked firms to demonstrate as part of the social value part of the competition, how you would reduce disability employment gaps and also to tackle inequality of underrepresented groups, particularly those from deprived groups.

And we also asked you to to talk about and provide us with some evidence of how you've improved physical and mental well-being, health and well-being, because that's really important, particularly when people, colleagues are working really, really hard.

So those areas that we identified as being important for you are also those which are central to our own people strategy. And we'll be measuring the impact both for ourselves and for you.

But I wanted to draw out two particular examples that I'm really excited about and which we are working on together. So the training and apprenticeship swaps that we've been doing with TLT are really valuable for us. They give the opportunity for our lawyers to go out to get experience of working in a private sector firm. The different considerations we talked earlier about some of the areas where you're a little bit technically ahead of us, that's certainly a real benefit.

I spoke to one of our recent trainees who spent some time with you and it was one of the things that she really flagged up was the insights that she was given into how you use AI, but also the takeaway that she has about how you work with external firms. And that's something that will be a really good foundation for her GLD career going forwards.

She also said that TLT were incredibly welcoming and generous with their time, but really knowledgeable too about the government legal context. So that's really pleasing.

The other thing that I know we're both really passionate about is the Sutton Trust Pathways into Law and the work we do together on the summer diversity scheme.We hosted a week of underrepresented groups in Bristol and you helped helped us Co-host. So they spent the day with you in your Bristol offices and the feedback that we get from those kind of events is fascinating.

We're already seeing, I think, I heard the first graduate from one of those placements is now a GLD lawyer. So we've seen it come full circle that, you know, I think is just so important and I know we're going to do more of it together this year.

Bill Hull: I think in, in general, it's been transformative for government that having set 10% of the value of all the scoring in its tenders to social value. And I think we'll see a real societal change as a result.

And actually the fact that we are measuring these things now, I think we'll be able to see a real demonstrable change.

So want to look a little ahead.

I think often the tendency is to look far ahead, imagining perhaps a doomsday scenario when much of our legal analysis can be boiled down to an AI response. But perhaps bringing it closer to home, what are the emerging demands for GLD in the next 12 months and what are you saying to staff, to external firms, will there be an increasing need or demand for this sort of expertise or approach?

Sarah Goom: Yeah, so given what's happening in the wider world at the moment, I have no doubt that there's going to be a few unexpected challenges. So that seems to be the way these days.

But just thinking for the next 12 months about what we're planning for. We have a King's Speech that will come in sometime after the May elections. We don't know exactly when, and that will give us much greater clarity on the government's legislative programme for the second session. We know we're going to have what they're calling once in a generation reform to the water industry and water regulation. That's definitely going to be a big element for our lawyers, certainly the lawyers on my side from the Department of Environment.

I think it's inevitable that we're going to have a lot of work internationally, certainly on the trade side, tariff side, we are going to see a greater focus on free trade agreements. We are, we know we're going to see a lot of work on EU reset. That's going to be very important to this government. So lots for lawyers to do there. We'll be finalising the US-UK economic prosperity deal, I hope. So, lots on the international side.

I think we can be sure there'll be plenty of litigation. It seems to be increasingly the case. Again, looking at my side, I'm responsible for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, lots of climate change policy. It seems to be equally controversial with both sides of the argument. And we are increasingly seeing that we get litigation challenges from both sides of the argument. So we'll be expecting to see lots more there.

And given the focus on growth, I think we're going to see quite a lot on the commercial side, both in terms of using procurement to drive growth, but also infrastructure, huge projects, the nuclear industry, house building, all sorts of things that will need our commercial input and our commercial and your commercial skills.

So yeah, I don't think there's going to be any shortage of work anytime soon.

Bill Hull: I'm conscious also there's been significant investment in GLD over the last few years.

You mentioned the appointment of Richard Cornish as your first COO, what he terms, I think the professionalisation of the GLD service. And I just wonder what your ambitions are for the service under his operation and what role we at TLT can be expected to play in that?

Sarah Goom: I think professionalisation is exactly the right word. I think for, for a long time before we had a chief operating officers group, we were, we were a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs I think is how I would put it. So the lawyers, legal directors, deputy directors, the DGs were essentially running developing initiatives, projects. Of course we had, we had people supporting us in that, but I think we sort of took it upon ourselves to think that we could put a lot of that in place. So we had lots of task unfinished groups and you know, we did some valuable things, but I think we missed the opportunity to have real in depth professional experience from people who have come from the outside world, often from solicitors firms.

And that's what we're building. You know, Richard brings a huge amount of experience from government. We're bringing in colleagues like the fantastic Lorraine Robinson, who's head of our legal delivery directorate, you know, who are really, really building our capacity to do this sort of thing.

And it was one of Susanna McGibbon. It was one of her key objectives was to both bring about that professionalisation, but also I think really importantly to let lawyers do law.

So I think that that move away from it being something that we had to do ourselves, bringing in really professional data and digital colleagues, project managers, but also making sure that the voice of the business is part of that. And I think at the moment, you know, we talked about partnership earlier, the partnership between GLD and TLT, and our other panel firms. I think we, internally we've got now a very strong partnership between the lawyers in the legal business and the professionals in the COO side to deliver those really rather ambitious projects that we have.

I mentioned the legal practice management system. It's going to be a real game changer for us. We've got some really rather elderly case management and time recording support at the moment. We really need to turn that around and get ourselves into the 21st century. And Richard is leading on that and you're helping us with that.

Bill Hull: So final question, Sarah, thank you very much for a fascinating discussion.

But perhaps looking more to that horizon, perhaps 10, even 25 years hence, what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you expect us - GLD, TLT - to tackle together going forward?

Sarah Goom: Gosh, well, I'm not even going to attempt to to think about 25 years. Given the pace with which society and law is changing and the global scenario is changing so quickly, I think I'll sort of limit myself to five to 10 years.

I mean, I think what's inevitable is that there is still going to be a requirement for lawyers. We, I, have no doubt that you will go on to talk about AI in just a minute. But you know, we are not going to uninvent ourselves as the legal issues get more complicated. We can use AI as a tool and undoubtedly we already are. And it's saving us time and, you know, often giving us access to greater materials. But what we're really learning, aren't we, particularly from some of those rather toe curling cases that are going through the courts, is the need for a human at the end of the tool and that intelligent use of the product that AI can come up with. And as society gets even more complex, it strikes me that that judgement that real human being lawyers can bring is going to be really valuable.

So just sort of thinking about the things that we're likely to face, we know that for the rest of this government, this Parliament, there is a really ambitious project going forward and that focus on growth and all of the legislative and policy drivers of growth is going to continue to be really important.

Part of my role is, as you know, on the international side, I'm sort of constantly being asked about, usually by non international lawyers about, you know, this sort of idea that the international rules based framework is really irrelevant. Now I can understand why people are concerned about that, but I think, you know, everything that my lawyers are doing tells me that there's going to be plenty of international law work as society and the global situation becomes perhaps even more complicated. Tariffs, trade, unfortunately, you know, the laws of conflict are going to be be be relevant and that's not going to go away. So I think there is going to be plenty of legal work to be done.

I think some of it we probably don't even have a sense yet as to what the challenges are going to be because of the speed with which things are changing. But I can understand why as a as a young lawyer or somebody who's aspiring to a legal career, the kind of headlines that we've seen about how law is going to be one of the professions that's going to be really impacted by AI, I can see why that's scary.

I think there'll be a real challenge to us as to how we train our lawyers. If the type of legal work that's going to be vulnerable to AI is typically the sort of, the work that you cut your teeth on. There's a real challenge for us there as to how we induct lawyers, how we give them that safe learning curve. But as I've said, I just think the issues are going to be so complex, they are not going to be solvable by AI in the future. And we just have to think about how we best prepare our people and ourselves for that not too distant future.

Bill Hull: I think that's right, isn't it?

The need to be courageous, the need to make judgement calls is still going to be there. Notwithstanding that, AI will be doing a lot of the assimilation of the factors, the criteria that go into that decision. Someone is going to have to be a part of that and to be able to communicate that effectively and with confidence.

And actually on the sort of bright side, to the extent there is, I mean, it's fascinating the democratisation of knowledge and information that technology and AI has brought. And what was once proprietary is now readily available, often for free, and the opportunity that that creates. And I know we've been working with the MoJ on this, on Access to Justice. I think that the opportunity for that to open up the law to huge swathes of society, whether business or in their personal lives, is really interesting to me.

And I wonder if careers in the future, whether with the advent of AI and the impact that that will have, perhaps lawyers can follow one of two paths. You can either be extremely specialist in a core area, a very complex area, or actually one goes back to to being what we used to hear of the lawyers in our in the long distant past, The sort of “men or women of letters” who could apply their broad range of skills to all sorts of different scenarios, but do so credibly because they are supported by that bank of knowledge that AI can help provide to them.

Sarah, thank you so much for your time today.

It's been absolutely fascinating.

Sarah Goom: I've really enjoyed it.

Bill Hull: I very much look forward to our further work in the future.