Geoff Wild - Director of Governance & Law

Geoff is Director of Governance & Law at Kent County Council.  He heads up one of the largest teams of local authority lawyers in the country, operating as an in-house trading practice, and serving over 300 clients nationwide from across the whole of the public sector.

Geoff believes passionately that public sector lawyers should dispel their image as bureaucratic civil servants and display their talents as entrepreneurs to be measured against the best across the whole of the legal profession.

With this theme, he has led his team to several awards, including twice winning The Lawyer Public Sector Legal Team of the Year (2005 and 2009) and also won the LGC Legal Team of the Year 2009.  In addition, the team has been runners up in the MJ Awards - Public Sector Legal Team of the year (2005, 2007 and 2009); the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Ranking (2007); the British Legal Awards (2010) - Innovative Category; and In House Lawyer of the Year (Runner Up) in the Lawyers Awards (2011).

In 2005, the Local Government Chronicle named Geoff as one of the five top local government lawyers in the country and he is acknowledged as an expert in local government, administrative and public law by The Legal 500. The Lawyer identified him as one of its ‘Hot 100’ lawyers for 2006, as a lawyer who had “excelled in his chosen field and is shaping the legal landscape”; and he was Highly Commended in The Law Society Awards 2009 as In House Solicitor of the Year. Most recently Geoff has been named the Law Society LMS Leader of Year 2011.  The Judges identified him as "someone who has made a dynamic contribution to legal services in the public sector.  Applying a business model of "in-house private practice", his entrepreneurial leadership has built up a practic of over 100 lawyers and a turnover of £7 million.

Geoff is committed to the highest standards of excellence in the legal profession, and has successfully secured internationally recognised BS EN ISO 9001:2000 and the Law Society’s Practice Management Standard (LEXCEL) certification for his team. In delivering those services, Geoff strongly believes that they should be tailored to meet customers’ absolute satisfaction, and has gone a long way to confirming this with the attainment of Investors in People and Charter Mark accreditation for the lawyers of Kent.

Geoff was previously with the London Borough of Wandsworth, Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council and the Greater London Council. He qualified as a solicitor in 1986, holds an LL.B (Hons) and Diploma in Local Government Law & Practice, and is one of the founder members of the Eversheds/County Councils Benchmarking Group, linking lawyers in public and private practice across the country.

He is adviser to the Government of St Helena on governance and ethics issues. Geoff is also the only person in the country to be Monitoring Officer simultaneously for two ‘excellent’ authorities (Kent County Council and the Kent & Medway Fire Authority).