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LocalGovernmentLawyer The Legal Department of the Future February 2016 9 that can be adopted. The proposed Orbis Public Law partnership under consideration by Surrey East Sussex West Sussex Brighton Hove Councils and an unnamed district appears to be a looser affiliation with the lawyers in each team continuing to be employed by their original authority. There are a number of other collaborative arrangements limited to initiatives such as joint training and the procurement of solicitors and legal publishing. Despite the inherent flexibility of shared service arrangements nearly half of heads of legal 48 say this option is not presently being considered. The three most commonly given reasons for this are that demand for legal advice can be met within the present structure members and senior officers want to retain an independent legal function and a shared service would lead to a disconnection between the legal team and internal client departments. Making the business case The survey reveals that a number of putative shared services have clearly foundered at the business case stage. We have been through this and demonstrated that the service would not be as good and would probably be more expensive says one respondent. Another points to a lack of any real evidence of shared services delivering savings which are not achievable through simpler means. The shared service model would not deliver real sustainable savings adds a third although they add that it needs something more aggressive real change rather than rearranging the deckchairs. Other heads of legal report that the idea was actively pursued around 201011 but there had been no appetite at the time Fig 5 Fig 6