Attorney General visits The City Law School students to talk about careers in law • City, University of London

Attorney General, the Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP, and Zane Denton, Deputy Legal Director, Commercial Law Group, GLD, shared their experiences and advice with our students.

By Mr Shamim Quadir (Senior Communications Officer), Published Wednesday, 3^rd January 2024

On Thursday 23 November, the City Law School was delighted to welcome the Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP, Attorney General for the UK Government, and Zane Denton, Deputy Legal Director of the Commercial Law Group, Government Legal Department (GLD), to talk to our students about their backgrounds and experience as government lawyers and the work of the GLD.

The fact that Victoria and Zane had worked together for many years at the GLD provided their audience with an especially thorough and nuanced description of what being a government lawyer could be like, how the GLD has changed over the years, including from a diversity perspective, and what it is looking for in prospective staff who wish to join its ranks today.

Professor Richard Ashcroft, Zane Denton and the Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP

Professor Richard Ashcroft, Executive Dean of the City Law School, introduced the speakers, and reminded the audience that the Attorney General is actually an alumna of the School, having studied for her bar course at the Inns of Court School of Law (ICSL), which later joined City, University of London and, with its Centre for Legal Studies, formed The City Law School.

In her talk to City students, Victoria discussed her varied career, beginning by talking about the importance of her mentors when she was studying law, and why she got into government law: to help the government make people’s lives better.

She talked about her first job in the government legal service, then known as TSol (now the GLD, since 2015), which was in the Judicial Review and Human Rights team. To her, this was a new, exciting and emerging area of law where everything was happening, and which preceded and eventually brought in the Human Rights Act, 1998.

Unusually for a government lawyer, she stayed within that team for 17 years, progressing from the most junior to the most senior role within it, mainly specialising in Article 2 of the Human Rights Act, (the right to life), and happily job sharing for much of that time too.

After becoming increasingly involved in campaigning in her local area, her career path changed when her local MP (for Banbury) resigned. While busy running a large team of lawyers in the GLD, and separately chairing the Oxford Hospital Trust’s Benefactors’ Board (which she also founded), she heard then Prime Minister, David Cameron, on the radio:

I remember vividly hearing David Cameron talking on my radio in the kitchen – I mean, clearly he was talking to more people than just me – but it felt like he was talking to me.

“He said, ‘I really need women to put themselves forward for standing for Parliament,’ because we’re underrepresented. So I did, and I was slightly surprised how quickly everything happened.

"I was elected the MP for Banbury, which is the town where I was born, and where we’ve always lived. Which was great.

She added that when she arrived in Parliament, she expected there to be lots of lawyers, but there were not - sharing that the UK Parliament is currently about 13% MPs from a legal background. She juxtaposed that figure against the US Congress, where about 40% of representatives are from legal backgrounds.

Victoria shared her view that being a lawyer in Parliament is very useful, given that it is where laws are made, and it means that you are not afraid of it. With a continued interest in law, she was elected to and spent three years sitting on Parliament’s Justice Committee, which allowed her to focus on prison reform – an area of law that has always fascinated her.

She shared how her ministerial roles for government later included work with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) which segued into her becoming Attorney General, about which she remarked:

My family has a farm, and I’ve always farmed there at weekends, it’s a very important part of our life.

“It has to be said my DEFRA role had a very legal focus. This was at the time of Brexit, and trying to sort out the new rules, at least the borders and Northern Ireland, and it was definitely a legal role, not a farming role.

"When Rishi came in, he asked me to be Attorney General and it’s great. It’s a brilliant job for someone who really loves law. I spend most of my days doing law, reading things and writing things, much as most lawyers do.

Victoria explained the importance of maintaining client confidentiality as a lawyer, and in her role, and also shared how she enjoys her superintendence functions over the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Serious Fraud Office, and also over her previously departmental colleagues within the GLD.

Here she segued into introducing to the students her long-time colleague, Zane Denton, whereupon they both reflected fondly and with humour, upon the early days of their careers working together.

Zane began his talk to students with a focus on the future of the GLD and his role as one of its early talent champions. This covers legal trainees, apprentices and paralegals and other professions. He spoke about how the GLD is trying hard to look forward at what its future workforce will look like, and reminded the students that while there are private sector firms out there who want them, the GLD wants them too.

He shared how he felt the GLD was performing well in a number of areas of diversity (which Victoria agreed with), and made the points that while Victoria as the Attorney General is his ‘boss’ when it comes to reporting to government ministers, his other boss is the Treasury Solicitor, a role which goes back to 1580 and leads the UK civil service, and is held by a woman too ( Susanna McGibbon ).

Zane added that the Treasury Solicitor supervises three Director Generals, who are all women; and then under them a large number of Legal Directors, over half of which are women, and with a relatively high percentage of colleagues from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds.

He then reflected on his own career, having been fascinated with, and moved around a lot of different areas of law within the GLD:

I’ve done public law teams, Victoria mentioned judicial review – it’s a fascinating area. And doing it for the public good, it really is awesome.

"I remember when I first started and opening the newspaper – page one, it was something we were working on, page two, three, four – you kind of get used to it.

"But everywhere, every story you read about HMG [His Majesty’s Government], it’s probably got a government lawyer lurking somewhere in the background. We just do it quietly, and that is a real shame, but we’re going to try and turn that around.

Zane Denton and the Rt Hon Victoria Prentis KC MP

Zane also shared that as well as public law, he has been able to do a lot of private law in the GLD, which might surprise some. By way of example, he said that cases of mistreatment of prisoners in the UK, which are private law cases that can be brought against the state, are cases that lawyers in the GLD will work on and are quite common. These cases have a public law element which he said cuts across everything the GLD does.

He also expressed how important it is to know about managing public money and a budget as one progresses through the ranks of the civil service:

We charge our clients, but we cannot make a profit and we cannot make a loss in the government legal department, because what we spend is taxpayers’ money. And taxpayers look at us and say, 'Where’s the value for money? What are you doing to save money and make it more efficient?’

Zane is currently in the commercial law part of the GLD, and acknowledged that while it pays a fair wage, it doesn’t in any way match the wages of many commercial lawyers in the private sector. However, it was on this point that he reminded his audience that he and the other 2,100 staff in the GLD are not doing the work for the money, but are doing it because they are passionate about their work for government and public service.

He engaged the audience with a question:

How much do you think HMG spends annually to buy goods and services? It’s not a secret, it’s public information, you can Google it. Give me your number, and I’ll tell you it’s in billions.

To gasps, he answered the question:

‘£2.3 billion?’ … it’s £300 billion! So, we need commercial lawyers, and in my bit [of the GLD] there are 250 of us to cover all of that. So, you’ll find people doing an awful lot [of commercial law].

Zane used the example of the Covid-19 pandemic as for when government needed to act quickly to buy goods and services to help with the nation’s response to the crisis, with one of the very first things HMG had to procure and put together was its test and trace service, including the app – which hadn’t existed until then.

He then summarised his take home message to students, sharing how working in the GLD means one gets to work in a broad range of law (employment, litigation, commercial, statutory work) within which one can specialise. However, on top of that, one also needs to layer on the public law element of the GLD, and also have an understanding of the policy which is made and requested by Parliamentarians, in order to be effective at implementing the law. Staff need to be prepared for difficult conversations and work out what they can and cannot advise within the law.

Zane stressed the immense scrutiny the GLD is under and the reputation it must maintain. Ministers must have trust in what it does, as do the courts, which boils down to the importance of, and GLD’s adherence to, the rule of law, including that no one is above it.

Victoria and Zane then fielded a wide-ranging Q&A session with their audience, including around pro bono work within the GLD (you can do it), in what instances Victoria must put her wig on and take part in formal courtroom proceedings (so far only once as Attorney General at the Hague on investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine), and whether there is a Shadow Attorney General (yes, Emily Thornberry MP ).

One student question was about employability and whether the GLD has a view on the institution an applying candidate comes from, for example, whether they are from the Russell Group or not. The Attorney General responded:

The university someone is applying from doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference. What we are looking for is an attitude of public service, and excitement and keenness about law.

"So, I think what makes us special is that, as Zane says, you can earn more money in other areas of law, but people join us because they are really excited about pushing the law.

"We do novel and challenging law all the time as standard, you’re never going to have a dull day, and you often have no idea what’s happening when you come in in the morning.

"What you do know is that because of the way government runs, you will be out there making the law, in some cases actually writing it, as well as having it done to you.

"You’re very much taken at face value is my experience [from Zane: ‘a meritocracy’], yeah it really is.

Linda Jotham, Associate Dean for Employability and Engagement, The City Law School

A networking reception followed the talks where students were able to ask further questions. Reflecting on the event, Nicholas Blaikie-Puk, a City LLB student, said:

As a postgraduate international law student, I am grateful to have fostered my curiosity about the work of government lawyers directly from those at the height of that career.

"The opportunity to converse with the Government Legal Department, and the Attorney General of England and Wales, was an honour made accessible through the support of City’s employability services and legacy.

Linda Jotham, Associate Dean for Employability and Engagement at the City Law School said:

The City Law School is focused on boosting our students’ employability outcomes and on supporting students in their choice of future career. As the Government Legal Department is one of the largest legal organisations in the UK and one which offers a very wide range of stimulating work to its recruits, we want to present to students the varied and rewarding opportunities that it offers. It was an honour to have the Attorney General lead on this. Many thanks to Rt. Hon. Victoria Prentis, KC, MP and to her colleague, Zane Denton, Deputy Legal Director of the GLD’s Commercial Law Group, for taking the time to do this.