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Home > About the GLS > GLS Departments > BIS

Business, Innovation & Skills

The mission of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is to build a dynamic and competitive economy by:

• Creating the conditions for business success
• Promoting innovation, enterprise and science
• Giving everyone the skills and opportunities to succeed

To achieve this, we will foster world class universities and promote an open global economy.


Legal Services Group plays a key part in this by:

• Providing our clients with high quality legal advice on major projects and 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 legal work is divided into two broad areas:

• providing legal advisory services to BIS and its Executive Agencies on the Department’s key policy areas

and

• undertaking criminal enforcement and prosecutions on behalf of BIS.

Work of the Legal Team

The work is intellectually demanding and involves a broad range of Government legal skills:
• 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
Lawyers in the advisory teams in the Legal Services Group advise BIS Ministers and officials on English, EC and international law on the Department's work. These include the law relating to:

Companies
Competition, monopolies and mergers
Consumer protection
Better Regulation
Employment relations, discrimination and equality
Export Control
Higher and further education
Information law
Insolvency
Intellectual property
Post, telecommunications and e-commerce
Procurement and Contracts
Science and innovation
Standards, technology and environment
State Aids, national and regional industrial assistance
Student support
World trade

Enforcement Work
Lawyers on the enforcement side are responsible for advising on the exercise of the Secretary of State’s powers of investigation under the Companies Acts, and for investigating and prosecuting offences on behalf of the Secretary of State under the Insolvency and Companies regimes, including bankruptcy offences and fraudulent trading. We work closely with the investigating officers who are part of the Group.

Benefits & Rewards

Lawyers joining BIS are assigned to a branch for an initial posting usually of 2-3 years. We encourage our staff to take an active part in their career development and we facilitate moves within the Group and the wider Government Legal Service to provide a broad range of experience. Pay increases are on merit and promotion is by competition. We have a good legal library and training and development is encouraged and supported through a strong in-house programme and opportunities available in BIS and externally.

Legal Trainee & Pupillage Opportunities

The Legal Group has many years experience of offering a trainee programme, providing support and opportunities to challenge, stimulate and develop legal trainees and pupils.

“Varied, challenging and often cutting edge” – words which trainee solicitors and pupil barristers used to describe their training in Legal Services Group.

Our aim is to enable our 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 areas that include insolvency, company law, employment, consumer law, intellectual property, aid to industry and EU co-ordination. Our trainees also undertake a litigation seat at the Treasury Solicitor's Department or HMRC. Our pupils have their first six months in Chambers and their second six in one of our Prosecution teams. The aim is to give pupils 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

Posts are usually based in BIS headquarters in London.

Further Information

You can visit the BIS website – http://www.bis.gov.uk.