Insight Local Government Lawyer Insight July 2017 11 not being given room to grow. It's like a little plant, a little seedling, in a dark corner, it needs the light and it needs to have lots of feeding and nurturing and so on. “Fortunately in Kent I have been very lucky to have some fantastic support, particularly from my leader, Paul Carter, who's been a huge supporter who has not wavered at all in his support of me and this venture, and also David Cockburn, Head of Paid Service, and the senior officers at KCC who have allowed this to happen, in the face of extreme financial adversity.” Consequently, Wild is not expecting a deluge of similar initiatives from other local authorities, albeit with the caveat that current the political and financial environment makes predicting the future more difficult than ever. “I'm very lucky in being in a position where I've had support and the backing and the funding to be able to do this and I'm not sure that's readily available in many other places right now,” he says. “To get the political will, the financial backing and the operational proceedings all aligning to make this happen is a huge task - you need to have them all in place at the same time, together with the funding to make it happen. “A lot of organisations would like to do this, but not many will. I think there will be more organisations of the Harrow/Barnet variety [where lawyers remain employed by the council, only acting through the ABS when regulation requires] emerging, and I expect the trend of erosion in in-house legal teams to reverse. We're already seeing it in in-house environments in the commercial sector, where the number of in-house lawyers is growing as a proportion of the total population, and that's the common sense solution, to build up your own internal capacity. “But I still think there's going to be a need for external support, organisations who can supplement that, and provide an alternative to the mainstream private sector, if I can put it that way.” Finally, perhaps the obvious question for someone who has spent so much time and effort on commercialising local government legal practice from the inside – why hasn’t Geoff Wild just joined a law firm or another part of the private sector and made his fortune? “I've worked in local government for 30 years,” he says. “I've had the opportunity to join a law firm in the past, but I joined local government for a very specific reason, and I have stayed in local government for a very specific reason, and that's because I've seen the benefits of deploying my legal skills for others, and seeing the real, tangible impact of that. And I know that's what drives and motivates 90%, I think, of the lawyers that come and work in local government, or eventually find their way into local government. They want to feel that what they are doing makes a difference to the lives of others. “I've seen that you can do that from within local government, but you don't have necessarily to do it in a way which has always been done in local government. And that's what I've tried to do in my in-house role, is to reinvent my professional service in a way which is consistent with what happens in the private sector, but operates in an in-house environment. “And what we're trying to do in Invicta Law is create a commercial organisation that retains that real focus on what difference we can make to our clients, and how we can really serve them better, and provide them with a service which we know is needed and to remove some of the barriers that prevent people accessing law now.” Derek Bedlow is the publisher of Local Government Lawyer