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Home > About the GLS > GLS Departments > BERR

Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform(BERR)

BERR helps ensure business success in an increasingly competitive world

BERR is the voice for business across Government.

Our strategy (Our role and how we fulfil it)

BERR’s role is to help to ensure business success in an increasingly competitive world. It does this by:

· Promoting the creation and growth of business and a strong enterprise economy across all regions;

· Ensuring that all Government Departments and agencies deliver better regulation for the private, public and third sectors;

· Delivering free and fair markets, with greater competition, for businesses, consumers and employees;

· Ensuring the reliable supply and efficient use of clean, safe and competitively priced energy and managing energy liabilities effectively; and

· Ensuring Government acts as an effective and intelligent shareholder

Legal Services Group plays a key part in this by:

· Providing our clients with high quality, timely and fit for purpose legal advice on major projects and base-load work on policy delivery; and

· Enforcing the law effectively to discourage abuse of the Company and Insolvency system to protect creditors and consumers.

Our structure (How we are organised)

Legal Services Group is headed by Rachel Sandby-Thomas, the Solicitor and Director General. The work of the Group is divided into three broad areas:

· Legal A is engaged primarily in enforcement and prosecutions on behalf of BERR. It also provides legal advisory services to BERR on matters related to insolvency, freedom of information and export control.

· Legal B and C provide legal advisory services to BERR on matters related to business, consumers, employment, energy, regulatory reform and companies.

· Legal Resource Management/Legislation and International Policy (LRM/LIP) provides a range of essential support services to the Group, deals with international business law policy issues and provides the secretariat for the Department’s Legislative Board.

Work of the Legal Team

The work is intellectually demanding and involves a wide range of functions:

Drafting statutory instruments and other legal documents; Advising on the interpretation of existing legislation; Instructing Parliamentary Counsel on new primary legislation; Advising on the implementation of EC law; Taking part in international negotiations especially on EC matters; Investigating and prosecuting companies and individuals.

Advisory Work

BERR has one of the largest groups of advisory lawyers in Whitehall. Lawyers in the advisory directorates of the Legal Services Group advise Departmental Ministers and officials on English and EC law in all the areas of the Department's work. These include the law relating to:

Companies;
Competition, monopolies and mergers;
Consumer protection;
Better Regulation;
Electricity and gas;
Employment relations, discrimination and equality;
Insolvency;
Intellectual property;
Oil and Nuclear energy;
Post, telecommunications and e-commerce;
Procurement and Contracts;
Standards, technology and environment;
State Aids, national and regional industrial assistance;
World trade.

Enforcement Work

Lawyers in the enforcement directorate are responsible for advising on the exercise of the Secretary of State’s powers of investigation under the Companies Acts, the Financial Services Act, and the Insurance Companies Act, and for prosecuting for offences under legislation for which BERR has responsibility, including bankruptcy offences, fraudulent trading and insider dealing. They work closely with the investigating officers in the Group. They may be appointed to conduct statutory enquiries into companies.

Benefits & Rewards

Lawyers joining BERR are assigned to a branch for an initial posting usually of 2-3 years. The Group encourages its staff to take an active part in their own career development, and facilitates moves within the Group and the wider Government Legal Service to provide a broad range of experience. Pay increases are on merit, and progression on promotion is by competition. There is a good legal library, and training, both on and off the job, is encouraged.

Legal Trainee & Pupillage Opportunities

“Varied, challenging and often cutting edge” – words which trainee solicitors and pupil barristers have often used to describe their training at BERR.

BERR's aim is to enable its trainees to turn themselves into strong lawyers both during their training and in the years, which follow. We want the quality of training to compare well with legal training in other organisations, and we believe it does. We are committed to continuous improvement of our own training.

We want to give our trainee solicitors a broad range of experiences. We aim to cover public law, employment law, EC law, legislation and drafting and civil litigation. Over the last few years trainees have had seats in the following areas, insolvency, company law, employment, consumer law, intellectual property, aid to industry and EU co-ordination. There has also been a seat in the Litigation Group of the Treasury Solicitor's Department. Our pupils have their first six months in Chambers and their second six in, our Enforcement Directorate. The aim for pupils is to give them a genuine Chambers experience and to let them have as much time on their feet in court as possible, so that by the end of the pupillage they have developed confidence as advocates.

Legal Trainees and Pupil Barristers are recruited through the GLS Legal Trainee Scheme.

Qualified Lawyer Vacancies

Vacancies are advertised through the central GLS scheme. All vacancies are posted on the Civil Service Recruitment Gateway (this link will open in a new window).

Location

All posts are based in BERR headquarters in London.

Further Information

Read more about career development within BERR
(Adobe Acrobat pdf, 42kb).

You can also visit the BERR website - http://www.berr.gov.uk.

To talk to someone about working as a lawyer in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, contact Susanna McGibbon, Director, Legal Services Group on 020 7215 3470 (Susanna.Mcgibbon@berr.gsi.gov.uk). Or you can write to her with any questions you have at Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Legal Services Group, 5th Floor, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET.

For questions regarding pay and conditions, please contact Cathie French tel. 020 7215 3395 (Cathie.French@berr.gsi.gov.uk) or Julie Braithwaite on tel. 020 7215 0170 (Julie.Braithwaite@berr.gsi.gov.uk)

If you would like to talk about Training Contracts or Vacation Placements within BERR, please contact John Coan on 020 7215 3461 (John.Coan@berr.gsi.gov.uk).