Geoff Wild
Director of governance and law
Kent County Council
With 130 lawyers, Geoff Wild heads up one of the largest teams of local authority lawyers in the UK operating as an in-house trading practice. He looks for proactive dynamic entrepreneurial lawyers in his team that can demonstrate local government lawyers are not second rate compared to the private sector.
When Wild joined Kent County Council,
the team had 24 lawyers. Over half of the
council’s legal work was outsourced to a legal panel, which was very expensive and inefficient. Two years in, he abolished the panel and built up the in-house practice reducing external legal costs by two-thirds. 95% of work is retained in-house.
In 2010, Kent County Council teamed up with Geldards to create Law:Public, a unique public/private collaboration offering a full service at competitive prices to the public sector.
Wild considers his team to be a fairly substantial law firm in its own right. Turnover totals around £11m a year with £2m profit – brought in mainly from external work, including deals from over 300 public sector bodies.
Law firms used: Eversheds, Geldards, Nabarro
2006-present: Director of governance and law, Kent County Council
2012-present: Clerk to the lord lieutenant, Lord De L’Isle
2011-present: Senior information risk owner, Kent County Council
1998-2006: County secretary, Kent County Council