Introduction
The Solicitor's Legal Information Centre (SLIC) of the Scottish Government Legal Directorate co-ordinates legal information and research services for the Government Legal Service for Scotland and associated offices, and acts as a forum for the development of knowledge management and legal information initiatives.
In order to contextualise the work of SLIC, it may be helpful to provide some background on the Government Legal Service for Scotland and its constituent offices.
Government Legal Service for Scotland (GLSS)
The Government Legal Service for Scotland is a professional community of approximately 190 lawyers in government in Scotland which exists in order to:
• Raise awareness of the roles of public service lawyers and of the GLSS member offices.
• Promote contacts, share information and develop skills and knowledge among staff in its member offices.
• Provide shared services to member offices and their staff.
The GLSS member offices are:
• Scottish Government Legal Directorate (SGLD)
• Legal Secretariat to the Lord Advocate (LSLA)
• Office of the Solicitor to the Advocate General (OSAG)
• Legal Secretariat to the Advocate General (LSAG)
• Scottish Parliament's Directorate of Legal Services
• Scottish Law Commission (SLC)
The Office of the Scottish Parliamentary Counsel (OSPC) is an associate office and the GLSS also provides legal staff to, for example, the Crofters Commission, the Lord President's Private Office, the Scottish Land Court and other bodies working within the Scottish justice system.
GLSS work and offices
Lawyers working within the GLSS and its related offices are engaged on a wide variety of interesting and intellectually challenging work, much of it unique to government. A central theme of much of what goes on in the GLSS is the development and implementation of new law.
Preparation of legislation for both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster forms a large part of the workload, but it also includes handling high profile, sensitive litigation and dealing with novel devolution or other constitutional problems.
The fact that government is the client means that the work of the GLSS is often newsworthy, and it is always necessary to consider political consequences and potential sensitivities or wider implications. Given the nature of the work, the GLSS lawyer has a very influential role and a real opportunity to make a difference.
One aspect of working practice which differs markedly from many private sector firms is that lawyers in the GLSS tend to move between different areas of work over the course of their careers. They are viewed as specialist government lawyers, rather than as specialising in a particular subject area for lengthy periods of time.
This approach means that lawyers develop transferable skills and are able to deal with novel subjects which frequently arise.
• Scottish Government Legal Directorate
As noted in the introduction, SLIC is part of the Scottish Government Legal Directorate. SGLD is the largest office in the GLSS, providing legal services to the Scottish Government and its agencies. This covers a very wide spectrum including litigation and tribunal work, property and commercial law and procurement advice, instructing Bills and drafting subordinate legislation, including implementation of EC Directives. These responsibilities include the provision of legal advice to the Scottish Ministers.
A major focus of SGLD's advisory and legislation work is in ensuring that ministers act always within the powers conferred on them by the devolution settlement and that government bills presented to the Scottish Parliament are within the legislative competence of the Parliament. This aspect of the office's work invariably involves consideration of human rights issues.
SGLD reports to the Lord Advocate and Solicitor General for Scotland who are the principal ministerial advisers to the government on legal matters. It currently has 122 lawyers, plus a range of support staff (including SLIC).
• Legal Secretariat to the Lord Advocate
The Lord Advocate and Solicitor General, known as the Scottish Law Officers, are members of the Scottish Government as well as its principal legal advisers. The Legal Secretariat supports them in this role by researching and helping draft legal opinions when advice at the highest level of government is required. This office comprises three lawyers plus support staff.
• Office of the Solicitor to the Advocate General
The Advocate General is the Law Officer responsible for advising UK ministers on Scots law. OSAG is part of the Office of the Advocate General, which is a Department of the UK Government, and is responsible for advising UK government departments operating in Scotland on all matters relating to Scots law. It instructs UK legislation applying in Scotland and represents its client departments in litigation before the Scottish courts. It has special expertise in administrative law and in the division of legal powers between the devolved Scottish institutions and their UK counterparts.
The Office also provides support for the Advocate General in carrying out his statutory functions under the devolution settlement. Devolution issues arising in the Scottish courts are intimated to the Solicitor to the Advocate General and the staff of the Office co-ordinate their consideration in Whitehall and arrange for any intervention which the Advocate General considers appropriate. Legal staff also consider legislation which comes before the Scottish Parliament, so as to identify any issues about competence which may arise. These issues are then considered in co-operation with Cabinet Office and other Whitehall legal advisers. The Office comprises around 25 lawyers, plus support staff.
• Legal Secretariat to the Advocate General
The Advocate General is one of the three UK Law Officers, along with the Attorney General and Solicitor General. The Legal Secretariat is a small team, normally of three lawyers, and is based in London. They assist the Advocate General in preparation of Law Officers' opinions (some of which are prepared jointly with the Law Officers for England and Wales), and support him in relation to Parliamentary business, Cabinet committee meetings, correspondence, speeches and other general business. The legal staff take part in Cabinet Office committees of officials and other Whitehall co-ordinating meetings on European law, human rights and devolution.
• Scottish Parliament's Directorate of Legal Services
The Directorate provides the parliamentary legal service so GLSS staff, while at the Parliament, gain experience as parliamentary lawyers. The work is diverse. Much of it is legislative - helping produce non-government bills, advising the Presiding Officer on legislative competence, scrutinising minister-made subordinate legislation. There is also work on procedures and governance, such as advising the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body which is responsible for providing the Parliament's property, staff and services. The Directorate has 13 lawyers, plus four support staff, who can make use of the Parliament's information services (SPICe) as well as those provided by SLIC.
• Scottish Law Commission
The Scottish Law Commission is an independent statutory body which recommends reforms to improve, simplify and update the law. Its recommendations, if accepted, are generally implemented through legislation in the Scottish or Westminster Parliaments. Lawyers seconded from the GLSS play an important role in managing and contributing to the development of legal policy on all of its reform projects. There are currently five senior GLSS lawyers working at the Commission. The SLC has its own comprehensive legal library and librarian but GLSS staff are entitled to use SLIC and its services as well.
GLSS Associate Office
• Office of the Scottish Parliamentary Counsel
OSPC currently has 14 lawyers, known as Scottish Parliamentary Counsel, who specialise in drafting primary legislation. Their main responsibility is the drafting of bills introduced in the Scottish Parliament by the Scottish ministers (known as ‘Executive Bills’) in pursuance of their annual legislative programmes and the drafting of amendments to those bills to be lodged on behalf of ministers.
Some of the Counsel in OSPC are also responsible for drafting Scottish provisions to be included in UK government bills at Westminster, including government amendments to those bills. In relation to executive bills in the Scottish Parliament, Counsel in OSPC act on instructions from lawyers in SGLD; and in relation to government bills at Westminster, they act principally on instructions from lawyers in OSAG.
SLIC and the GLSS
The role of SLIC is to provide the GLSS with a legal information, library and research service which conforms to the highest professional standards in information management and provision. As the GLSS is a multi-site operation, comprising various offices in Edinburgh and Dover House, London, as well as individual secondees, who may be based in Brussels or throughout the UK, our first priority is to make certain that our users are not disadvantaged by their geographical location. Therefore we endeavour to ensure that all our users:
• Have access to the right information in any format when it is required/needed.
• Experience an effective and proactive legal enquiry and research service.
• Benefit from regular training in all aspects of legal information.
In short, we aspire to be a Centre of Excellence which fully supports our users in their work and in meeting business objectives.
SLIC – Current Services
SLIC's primary user base comprises the members of the GLSS who number approximately 190 lawyers and 45 administrative staff. However, as much of SLIC's work is generated by lawyers acting on behalf of their policy colleagues, we have a potential secondary user base of many times that number. It is not unusual for policy colleagues to request material from us via their solicitors. It is also the case that more complex legal information enquiries emanating from throughout the Scottish government are often dealt with by SLIC. These come to us via the Scottish Government Information Management Unit (IMU) which provides a corporate library service to the organisation. Our lawyers are therefore in the happy position of being able to enjoy their own dedicated legal library facility and also use the services offered by the IMU.
To ensure that all members of the GLSS receive a comparable standard of service, we have endeavoured to provide a proactive service which is comprehensive in scope and fully utilises IT and electronic information. Over the past few years we have rolled out numerous electronic products onto the lawyers' desktops, supported by relevant training where appropriate.
Various innovative services have been introduced in the past three years which have helped place SLIC in the forefront of legal information provision in Scotland. Benchmarking exercises with law firms and other government offices have been undertaken to ensure that SLIC is, and remains, a centre of excellence for the provision of information and legal research.
The main services which we currently provide are:
• Legal research and request service
• Book/journal loans – electronic recording
• Book and periodical purchasing and on approval copies
• Subscriptions management
• Inter-library loans
• Inductions for new solicitors and trainees
• IT product training
• Journal contents distribution
• Current awareness – daily and weekly bulletin production and circulation
• Electronic product management
• Online catalogue maintenance
• Collection management
• Intranet/internet/extranet editing and content management
• Knowledge management.
It is also part of SLIC's remit to provide specialist advice to staff on areas such as copyright, document storage, information dissemination and electronic records management.
Staff
The staffing complement comprises three full-time professional librarians and two administrative staff. A recent increase in staff numbers (the addition of a full-time assistant librarian) was justified with reference to a 336% increase in requests satisfied and research conducted and a 214% increase in documents supplied over a sample three year period. Since 2002 my role as Head of SLIC has also expanded to include formal knowledge management duties. From 2006 I have also fulfilled the role of Head of Profession for Librarians and Information Managers in the Scottish Government and its agencies
Electronic services
As noted above, we try to ensure that no member of the GLSS is disadvantaged by their lack of proximity to the Scottish Government's HQ building at Victoria Quay in Leith, Edinburgh where SLIC and the SGLD are based and our strategy has been to make available as much information in electronic format, both subscription and non-subscription, to our users as possible.
LINETS/LION
The main delivery mechanism for subscription databases is LINETS or the Legal Information Network for Scotland which is a Scottish government maintained online portal enabling access to Westlaw, LexisNexis, Justis, Lawtel, and HeinOnline, amongst other services. LINETS currently has over 1,400 users comprising lawyers and administrators in national and local government, as well as those working in government agencies, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the police service. Lawyers working in the Scottish government and the Office of the Advocate General are also able to access the non-subscription elements of LION or the Legal Information Online Network, which is maintained by our colleagues in the government legal service in England and Wales. (As a member of the LION Management Board, it is highly satisfying for me to have the opportunity to represent Scots law interests on this comprehensive online resource). GLSS lawyers also enjoy access to Casetrack and, via the Scottish Government IMU, the Oxford English Dictionary online, Justis Statutes and Celex.
SLIC staff are very much aware that it is not enough to provide a series of online links on lawyers' desktops and expect them to then get on with it without any further instruction. For this reason we run regular training sessions for all GLSS lawyers and have recently covered the following topics:
• Westlaw and Scots law
• Researching the legal internet
• Researching ECHR issues
• EU desk research.
These training sessions have been well received and we are planning to expand our activities in this area.
Intranet/Internet/Extranet
The SGLD office intranet is maintained by SLIC staff. As in many organisations it provides, amongst other functions, a document and knowledge management capability whereby the structured storage of in-house know-how is made available, on a restricted basis where necessary, to lawyers on the Scottish Government (SCOTS) IT network. As not all GLSS lawyers have access to this network, we decided to put together a secure neutral platform that everyone in the GLSS and our standing juniors (government counsel) could access. The result was a SharePoint site we called GLISSNet (Government Legal Information Services for Scotland), which was rolled out in January 2007 and has proved particularly popular with those lawyers who are not on the SCOTS network.
Other related initiatives which SLIC staff have facilitated include a mini-site on the intranet for our policy colleagues in the Scottish government and the maintenance of the GLSS presence on the Scottish government internet site. SLIC members of staff are currently active in the SGLD Communications Strategy Group which has, as its broad aim, the improvement of the internal information-flow in the office.
Current awareness
Another method of negating the tyranny of distance in a multi-site operation is by the email distribution of various legal updates. These include a daily update covering legal developments in Scotland and the rest of the UK and a weekly bulletin of human rights related information. Both these updates are archived on the SGLD intranet as well as on GLISSNet.
Collection management
The foregoing presupposes an ever-increasing proliferation of electronic resources in the field of legal information, encompassing online subscription services, free internet sites, Web 2.0, RSS feeds, wikis, blogs, e-books and e-journals, etc. I think it is safe to say that this presupposition is unlikely to be proved wrong. Therefore, the main task here for SLIC is to review and assess these resources, select the most relevant and secure best value and then provide easy to use navigational aids for our customers. An example of an interesting recent electronic acquisition is the CD ROM collection (some 60 discs) of local and personal acts comprising the digitised full text of over 21,000 acts from 1799–1990 which was kindly supplied to us by the House of Commons Private Bill Office.
However, it would be misleading for the reader to assume that SLIC has gone all-electronic and disposed of every dusty old tome. We still hold an extensive physical stock, both current and archive, and have recently produced a new collection management policy document, which aims to exploit and enhance our holdings and ensure they remain focussed on the business requirements of our office.
Legal research and request service
SLIC provides GLSS lawyers with a comprehensive research and request service. This ranges from document delivery to the more straightforward research queries, such as providing copies of amended legislation, lists of orders made under an act and establishing the judicial history of a case. However, we often receive more complex research queries, a non-exhaustive list of examples follows:
• Pepper v Hart research as an aid to statutory interpretation
• ‘Footnote’ checking when secondary legislation is being consolidated
• Checking the statute book for occurrences of phrases/terms/words
• Enquiries about the status of primary and secondary local legislation
• Enquiries which begin ‘What can you tell me about…………….’
• Enquiries which begin ‘Has there ever been an instance of………..’
• Requests for quasi-legislation such as directions or schemes
• Requests for historic consolidated versions of acts which pre-date electronic sources
• Research into the historic functions and powers of government officials
• Research into pre-Act of Union Scots legislation
• Company research
• Legislation relating to pre-independence India
• Research to assist in answering Parliamentary Questions and FOI enquiries
• Researching Commonwealth law
• Checking for judicial or statutory definitions
• Producing copies of obscure ‘authorities’.
Having previously worked in a commercial law firm, I think it is safe to say that hitherto I had never had to research the statute book to the same degree of depth and complexity as is involved in GLSS work. This is undoubtedly a natural concomitant of working in an office where a large part of the business revolves around producing and revising primary and secondary legislation.
Conclusion
Working in government can lead to constantly changing scenarios, particularly when the political landscape alters after an election. Therefore not only is it difficult, and often impossible, to predict the future, but any attempt to interpret the past can also be far from straightforward. We can strive to ensure that SLIC is equipped to deal with any forthcoming changes and challenges by identifying those patterns and trends which have occurred in the past and extrapolate from them so as to give us an idea of what to expect in the near and longer term future. After a number of years working in the Scottish Government, I would not presume to ‘have seen it all’, but I am confident that SLIC can evolve and adapt to continue to provide a first class information and legal library service to Scottish Government lawyers.
Biography
Roddy Waldhelm is Head of the Solicitor's Legal Information Centre in the Scottish Government Legal Directorate. He joined the Scottish Executive in February 2001 from the Defence Evaluation Research Agency in Rosyth where he was Information Manager. He is currently Head of Profession for Librarians and Information Managers in the Scottish Government and its Agencies.
From 1990 to 1998 he ran the library and information services of Osborne Clarke in Bristol. Prior to that he was Deputy Head of Library Services at British Aerospace Dynamics Division, Filton.
Roddy Waldhelm Solicitor's Legal Information Centre, G-B06 Scottish Government Legal Directorate Victoria Quay Edinburgh EH6 6QQ
