Pan Government framework for legal services to be set up in Northern Ireland

The Department of Finance of the Northern Ireland Government has given notice of its intention to set up a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement for legal services.

It said that services would be provided across a number of legal categories which are yet to be fully defined.

The Department said: “It is envisaged the scope of the framework will provide ‘common’ legal services to the NI Public Sector. The areas of law that are expected to be covered include: Employment, Property, Debt Recovery, Corporate, IT, IPR, Procurement, Litigation, Data Protection, Commercial, General and Specialist Advice, Capital Investment. This list is indicative and lot categories/ descriptors may be amended prior to going to tender.”

It added that it planned to engage with potential service providers from the industry “to better understand the market potential for providing legal services to NI Public Sector”.

A market engagement exercise is expected to take place in November 2016, with an estimated date of publication of contract notice of 26 February 2017.