Number of Access:187（2025-02-06 21:18 Counts）

Identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/11094/67740

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oulr065-025 pdf None 489 KB 398 2018.01.31  

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Title
Lawyers in UK Central Government : Key Specialists in a Generalist Bureaucratic Culture
Creator
CreatorName
Drewry, Gavin
Description
Articles
Abstract
The 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.
Publisher
Graduate School of Law and Politics, Osaka University
Source Title
Osaka University Law Review
Volume (Issue)
65
Page
25-46
Date of Issued
2018-02
Language
English
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/11094/67740
PISSN
04721381
NCID
AA00328406
Access Rights
open access
oaire:version
Version of Record
Category
紀要論文 Departmental Bulletin Paper
Osaka University Law Review / Number 65　(2018/2)