Tender for the provision of Legal Services

The availability of competent legal advice forms an obvious and key requirement for universities. The very nature of higher education requires the provision of legal advice across a broad spectrum of subjects. Although this broad spectrum can occasionally mean legal advice being sought from a law firm with specialist subject expertise (that would probably fall outside the scope of this tender), the majority of the legal advice required falls within the following core areas: -Commercial Services (including contracts, partnership, collaborations, public procurement, IP & franchise) -Dispute Resolution (including student matters) -Human Resources (including employment law, dispute resolution & tribunals, recruitment, employment procedures) -Property and Estates -International Law (including immigration) -Governance, compliance and company law -Grants and Funding -Competition Law and Subsidy Control -Loan Agreements -Charity Law -Data Protection Law; -Marketing, sponsorship and events management -Consumer Law, and laws impacting students; -Corporate Law (including advice on and assistance with the structuring of commercial transactions) -Health & safety, and -UK Law – specifically changes in legislation and the resulting changes required in University legal documentation e.g. terms and conditions etc. In 2021 the University conducted a strategic review of external legal costs and use of the advice provided. As a result, the University appointed in-house counsel in May 2021 providing advice in some of these core areas, together with a core duty of legal oversight. For a large higher education institution the volume, scope and complexity of legal advice requirements across these core areas as well as a range of specialists subjects, is regularly beyond the capacity and/or expertise of our in-house services team and forms the basis of this tender. For example, under the direction of the University Legal Services team, key stakeholders including estates and facilities, human resources, procurement and student casework often require external legal advice. Additional information: All Questions and Answers must be submitted via the Sell2Wales portal. Requests to attend the Supplier Engagement meeting should be made by emailing procurement@southwales.ac.uk.