In praise of public service legal careers

As he swaps the position of Director of Legal and Democratic Services at Buckinghamshire Council for the role of HM Area Coroner for Oxfordshire, Nick Graham reflects on the advantages of a legal career in the public sector.

At a recent career’s fair, amidst the AI start-ups with their robotic dogs and high-end branded media companies with their glitzy power point presentations, I suggested to those contemplating higher education that their desires for a fulfilling role in life might be found in the practice of law, and specifically urged them to think about a local government legal career. 

If you are motivated by social value – I said – and you want to use the law as a means of solving the real problems of diverse communities, and you like working with talented clients (like social workers, teachers, planners), and you would love the challenge of navigating that difficult line between the rule of law and political expediency – then local government will give you all this. After my pitch, it was heartening to see the gaggle of students wanting to know more.    

Until recently, I worked for Buckinghamshire Council which is home to some of the best local government lawyers you are likely to meet [shameless plug, if you see a job going in the legal team there, I urge you to apply for it]. They are involved in a staggering range of legal work: from HS2 infrastructure problems to child protection tragedies, from prosecuting rogue traders to multi-million-pound collaborations with the NHS, from domestic violence to financial fraud – and everything in-between. (Admittedly, it has one of the UK’s stand-out Chief Executives; it has a staff engagement metric which is off the scale; and it isn’t beleaguered by some of the funding and governance problems that other local authorities are struggling with.) 

But Bucks Council isn’t unique in the legal challenges facing it. In my 25 years as a lawyer in local government it has often felt like one of fastest areas of developing law, with Government passing legislation and the higher courts promulgating judgments involving local authorities with giddying regularity. And it can be complex. Most of the lawyers I managed were dealing with ‘partner-level’ cases scrutinised by both the press and the public.

There are, of course, the normal struggles: things go wrong or the Court doesn’t do what you anticipated. In one of my first ever Court appearances as a young solicitor in local government I attended Court to get what I thought was going to be a very straight-forward possession order on a care home that had been occupied by ‘persons unknown’ which, it transpired, were mainly homeless people. I turned up at Court only to find half a dozen opposition councillors vocally supporting the unauthorised occupants and making various public pronouncements to the assembled press about the lack of affordable housing etc. I got back to the office and was told – that is just a normal day in local government!

So, why – with all this interesting work and all these supportive colleagues - am I leaving such a role? On 22 April 2024 I am due to be sworn in as His Majesty’s Area Coroner for Oxfordshire. I like to think that whilst I am leaving local government, I am not leaving public service. And I hope my time in local government will serve me well and I will continue to use the law to help the real (and often tragic) circumstances of local people. Professionally, it is a fascinating area of law and I like the challenge of getting to grips with a host of new things – like complicated medical procedures, or the layout of roads and how cars perform on them in bad weather, or the effect of drugs on the body. 

But importantly, and more personally, like many people, I have known the untimely death of loved ones and if I can use the law and the coronial process to make even a small difference to honour the deceased, and those suffering bereavement, then that feels like a tremendous privilege.   

I shall miss local government. I shall miss my unassuming but incredibly effective manager, my hard working, and brilliant colleagues, and that feeling at work that anything could (and often did) happen on any given day. But I know that what I have learned over my time in local government will stand me in good stead in my new role, and for that I am grateful.

Nick Graham is HM Area Coroner for Oxfordshire.