Freedom of information response
Legal Services
• What is your spend with external law firms (please provide for the last 4 financial years)?
• Do you use eBilling technology to manage your law firm's billing (e.g. systems such as Legal Tracker, Brightflag, Apperio, CT Tymetrix, Mitratech etc.)?
• Who is your head of legal / general counsel (please provide email address)?
• Do you have a law firm panel / preferred supplier list / use a framework to buy your external law firm services? Please provide details where possible.
- What is your spend with external law firms (please provide for the last 4 financial years)?
We are unable to provide this information within the 18-hour limit. As a legal service, we do not log this information separately. We would therefore have to go back through 4 years of records, covering thousands of files. Similarly, other departments also instruct external law firms from time to time. We are not usually involved in that process and the costs would be managed within the individual departmental budgets. My understanding from my finance colleagues is that it is also not a reporting line across the council, so, again, it is likely that this would be a matter of going through four years of records for each departmental budget.
- Do you use eBilling technology to manage your law firm's billing (e.g. systems such as Legal Tracker, Brightflag, Apperio, CT Tymetrix, Mitratech etc.)?
No. Our billing is not handled in the same manner as private practice, as our work is primarily in-house and we use our Iken reporting facilities to provide the relevant costs data.
- Who is your head of legal / general counsel (please provide email address)?
Jayne Middleton-Albooye, Interim Head of Legal Services - J.MiddletonAlbooye@thurrock.gov.uk.
- Do you have a law firm panel / preferred supplier list / use a framework to buy your external law firm services? Please provide details where possible.
We use EM Lawshare and CCS frameworks.