The Government Legal Department (GLD) is the largest provider of legal services across government, working with all the main Whitehall Departments.   From roads to rivers, and health to human rights, our work touches on most aspects of public life.

The department has more than 14 client-facing advisory teams who provide legal advice on the development, design and implementation of government policies and decisions, draft secondary legislation and work with Parliamentary Counsel on primary legislation.  Our cross-cutting expert service groups for Litigation, Employment and Commercial Law provide specialist legal services to a wide range of government departments and public bodies.

We are a non-ministerial government department with more than 2,300 employees, around 1,800 of whom are solicitors or barristers. The department is based primarily in London but has teams in Bristol, Manchester, and Leeds. 

As an organisation our vision is to be trusted by government to provide consistently excellent and value for money services so government departments want to come to us to meet their legal needs, to be known throughout the legal profession for the quality of our legal work, and to be the best employer for our people.