Cost Lawyer Services

Costs Lawyer Services provided to Wider Public Sector Customers and Central Government Departments and their Arm's Length Bodies and Agencies. Suppliers on this Framework will be expected to provide an extensive range of mandatory law cost specialisms.

Crown Commercial Services ("CCS") is seeking to establish a multi supplier Panel Agreement for the provision of Cost Lawyer Services for Central Government departments, Arm's Length Bodies and the Wider Public Sector.

Services to include;

Costs consultancy and negotiation

Cost estimates and statement of costs

Advocacy and/or attending hearings

Instructing counsel

Providing advice

Preparing costs budgets, bills of costs, points of dispute, replies and court forms

N.B. Please be aware the dates input in the 'Closing Date' and 'Contract Start Date' have been used to enable the future opportunity to be published on Contracts Finder. The 'Closing Date' and 'Contract Start Date' have yet to be determined.

Additional information: This Prior Information Notice is to signal an intention to commence market engagement with those within the Legal Services market.

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) intends to hold market engagement sessions during December 2018 with industry experts and suppliers interested in potentially bidding for the resulting framework contract. If you are interested in attending a market engagement session please express your interest by emailing supplier@crowncommercial.gov.uk no later than midday on Friday 30th of November 2018, please include RM6137 as your E-mail subject Heading. Further details will be provided to you after this date. Your email must clearly state: the name of your organisation, and contact details for the individual(s) who will participating in the market engagement. CCS will use an eSourcing system for this competition and reserves the right to use an electronic auction.

Please note that, to register, you must have a valid DUNS number (as provided by Dun and Bradstreet) for the organisation which you are registering, who will be entering into a contract if invited to do so.

The date in II.3) is the estimated date of publication, please refer to the CCS pipeline page http://ccs-agreements.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/procurement-pipeline for updates and monitor Tenders Electronic Daily for the publication of the OJEU contract notice.

Please be advised that in preparation to participate in this competition for this framework that:

The Cyber Essentials scheme is mandatory for Central Government Contracts which involve handling personal information and providing certain ICT products and services. The Government is taking steps to further reduce the levels of cyber security risk in its supply chain through the Cyber Essentials scheme. The scheme defines a set of controls which, when properly implemented, will provide organisations with basic protection from the most prevalent forms of threat coming from the internet.

To participate in the procurement for the RM6137 Cost Lawyer Services, bidders will be required to demonstrate that they comply with the technical requirements prescribed by Cyber Essentials [Plus] for the services under and in connection with the procurement.

The bidder may be awarded a framework contract but shall not enter into any call off contracts with buyers until they are able to demonstrate to CCS that they meet the technical requirements prescribed by the Cyber Essentials [Plus] Scheme for services under and in connection with this procurement.

The service that arise from this framework will involve the supplier holding material that has been assigned a protective marking under the Government Security Classifications Scheme (April 2014) of OFFICIAL. It will be a condition of this contract that this material must be protected. Baseline protection controls are defined in ISO27001:2013 and further defined by the Security Policy Framework https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-security.