Online Legal Research

The strategic context

The GMC’s in-house legal team requires access to a user-friendly legal research tool to support the provision of its various functions (such as Fitness to Practise or Registration and Revalidation), conduct associated litigation, develop policy and deliver business transformation as well as provide wider ad-hoc advice to the organisation.

The GMC has the requirement to access the following legal research online on a 24/7 basis:

• Access to extensive UK case law, across the 3 UK jurisdictions.
• Access to consolidated legislation.

Scope of requirement

Suppliers will be asked to set out the coverage they provide, but as a minimum to cover caselaw from:

• House of Lords/Supreme Court and Privy Council;
• The Court of Appeal;
• Administrative Court/King’s Bench Division/High Court;
• The Employment Appeals Tribunal;
• The European Court of Justice; and
• Northern Ireland (NI) and Scottish caselaw.

The GMC requires appropriate training to be available at both the initiation of the contract and for the purpose of supporting new users through the life of the contract. Training by video link is acceptable.

Website access to the service should be available to all solicitors and trainee solicitors employed by the GMC. The GMC currently employs 77 solicitors and trainee solicitors, therefore, the service should be priced to be available to no more than 80 users with the majority of users accessing through a single group login to enable ease of access for the team. Individual logins and personalised services will be required for 20 users.

The GMC is seeking an optional service for journals (priced separately, if it attracts an additional cost). The journals we are interested in relate to:

• Judicial Revies and public law;
• Charity Law;
• Regulation of Healthcare Professionals;
• Medical Law; and
• Dispute Resolution/Civil Litigation.