The Government Legal Service (GLS) is an umbrella group comprising around 1900 qualified lawyers working as civil servants in around thirty UK Government departments.

The Treasury Solicitor (currently Paul Jenkins) is also the Head of the Government Legal Service. GLS lawyers are mostly employed by the department in which they work, or by the Treasury Solicitor's Department

Treasury Solicitor's Department

The Treasury Solicitor's Department is the largest in-house legal organisation in the United Kingdom's Government Legal Service.The Department is headed by the Treasury Solicitor. This office goes back several centuries...

 (TSol). The GLS brand is used primarily for recruitment

Recruitment

Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...

 purposes and for offering training and support to GLS lawyers. The GLS Secretariat supports the work of lawyers across the GLS by providing central library services and for an intranet

Intranet

An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...

 system, Legal Information Online Network, or LION, which can be accessed by all government lawyers, and gives access to commercial legal databases and information and articles relevant to government legal work.

Lawyers in the Government Legal Service:

• Instruct Parliamentary Counsel
  Parliamentary Counsel
  Parliamentary counsel are lawyers who prepare legislation that it is proposed to pass into law. The term Parliamentary draftsman is also widely used. These terms are used in relation to the United Kingdom parliament, and other parliaments on the Westminster system...
  
   to draft almost all United Kingdom
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
  
   primary legislation
  Primary legislation
  Primary legislation is law made by the legislative branch of government. This contrasts with secondary legislation, which is usually made by the executive branch...
  
  .
• Draft the vast majority of statutory instruments and secondary legislation in the UK.
• Ensure European Union law is correctly implemented into UK law
• Advise departments of the United Kingdom Government
  Departments of the United Kingdom Government
  Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom contains a number of Cabinet ministers who are usually called secretaries of state when they are in charge of Government departments called ministerial departments...
  
  on the formulation and implementation of policy
• Provide litigation services to departments of the United Kingdom Government and the wider public sector

There are separate but similar structures in the devolved administrations - the Government Legal Service for Scotland and Government Legal Service for Northern Ireland.