In-house lawyers employed by the Scottish Government: FOI release

Information requested

For each year from 2015 until the present year, 2025, please may you tell me:

1. How many in-house lawyers the Scottish Government employs.

2. For each year please tell me the overall salary costs.

3. For each year please provide me with a breakdown of salary bandings ie C3 – 2 people, C1 – 4 people.

Response

Scottish Government only holds information on job titles from the 2017-2018 Financial Year onwards. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

We have interpreted questions 2 and 3 to flow from question 1 and have therefore based our responses to question 2 and 3 on “in-house lawyers the Scottish Government employs”.

Information provided relates to Scottish Government Core Directorates only and staff identified are based on the data as at 31 March at the end of the financial year (or 31st December for the 2024-2025 financial year). The information provided for 2024-25 relates to published and verified workforce statistics from December 2024. This means while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not currently have some of the information you have requested from January 2025 to March 2025. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested for the time period January 2025 to March 2025. The next workforce publication as at 31st March 2025 will be published on 10th June 2025.

We changed our method of recording this type of information in October 2024. We now record the detail of the profession framework instead of job titles and the job title list for the previous years has been updated to align with staff now classified as ‘in-house lawyers’. However, prior to October 2024 the job title information was a user entry field and not always competed accurately, making it more challenging to identify those in scope. This may give rise to differences to similar information published in response to previous FOIs.

Response to Question 1 and 3

	Mar-18	Mar-19	Mar-20	Mar-21	Mar-22	Mar-23	Mar-24	Dec-24
B3	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
C1	80	116	123	128	134	152	153	140
C2	34	34	38	48	54	55	60	60
C3	6	5	5	6	3	5	5	7
SCS1	8	10	9	9	8	12	14	14
SCS2	1	0	1	1	1	1	1	1
Total number	129	165	176	193	200	225	233	222

Response to Question 2

	Wage Costs in £
2017-18	6,571,578
2018-19	7,782,640
2019-20	8,725,513
2020-21	10,904,593
2021-22	11,373,385
2022-23	12,789,095
2023-24	14,871,699
April 24 to Dec 24	11,305,039

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.