Be honest: is your law firm still “doing” local government tenders?
The local government sector is appealing.
For many national, mid-tier, and large single-city firms, local government work feels like a natural fit. It is grounded, community-facing, operationally interesting work. Councils deal with real-world issues at the coalface: planning disputes, employment matters, governance, property, procurement, regulatory issues, and the occasional very public problem nobody wants on the front page.
There is also the attraction of panel appointments. Once you are “on panel”, it can feel like the door is open to a steady stream of work.
Then you open the RFT.
The schedules are long. The declarations seem endless. The insurance and WHS questions start to resemble something designed for a construction contractor rather than a professional services firm. Somewhere around page 27, you find yourself signing duplicate declarations in slightly different formats and trying to work out why a legal services tender needs three separate responses on local content procurement policies.
None of this is unusual in isolation.
But taken together, the process can take as long, or longer, than responding to some state, territory or federal government opportunities.
And the commercial profile is often very different.
Templates built for someone else
One of the recurring frustrations with local government legal tenders is that the procurement framework often does not appear designed for legal services in the first place.
The structure and language of the schedules frequently reflect templates adapted from construction, infrastructure, facilities management, or general service procurement.
That means law firms can end up responding to extensive sections on:
WHS systems (including working at heights procedures and chemical safety registers!)
quality assurance frameworks
environmental management
supplier declarations
subcontractor arrangements
local economic participation
modern slavery
cybersecurity schedules
insurance matrices spanning multiple pages…
None of these issues are inherently unreasonable. Councils are accountable organisations and procurement teams are understandably risk-conscious.
But some of it is only loosely connected to the delivery of legal services.
In parts, it becomes difficult to link the response effort back to how legal capability is actually assessed in practice.
The ‘open’ tender trap
Part of the attraction is that generally local government tenders are genuinely open opportunities.
Unlike some institutional or panel appointments that are heavily relationship-driven or closed to outsiders, council tenders often allow any suitably qualified firm to submit a response.
On paper, that can feel highly accessible.
For firms trying to grow government work, particularly national, mid-tier, or ambitious single-office firms, the opportunity can appear attractive at first glance.
But a quick sense-check is often worthwhile before committing significant bid effort.
In many cases, council legal spend is relatively easy to estimate through annual reports, financial statements, procurement disclosures, or published contract registers.
And the numbers are sobering.
For smaller urban, regional, and rural councils, total external legal spend may sit well below $500,000 per year. In some cases, substantially below that, more in the tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of.
Then comes the panel structure.
If six, eight, or even ten firms are appointed, the potential share of work narrows quickly. Add to that the reality that many councils understandably favour providers with an existing local presence or established regional relationships, and the commercial opportunity can look very different from the headline “panel appointment”.
That does not mean firms should avoid these tenders altogether.
But it does mean the opportunity should be assessed realistically, particularly when the cost of pursuit can involve dozens of internal hours across partners, BD teams, pricing, compliance, and administration.
The compliance burden adds up
A recent regional procurement panel for legal services illustrated the point well.
The schedules extended well beyond 30 pages before attachments. There were overlapping declarations, construction-style compliance sections, buggy templates, duplicated signature blocks, and highly prescriptive formatting requirements.
In some cases, even navigating the template itself became part of the challenge.
Again, none of this necessarily makes the procurement ‘bad’. Local government procurement teams are often working within mandated frameworks and inherited templates.
But from the law firm side, the administrative effort can become disproportionate to the likely return.
Outside major metropolitan councils, legal spend is often relatively modest. Work is commonly spread across multiple panel firms. Volumes are uncertain. There is rarely any guarantee of instructions.
That creates a process where the effort required to respond is not always clearly matched to the likely commercial outcome.
It is surprisingly hard to differentiate
Another issue is that local government tenders can make it difficult for firms to properly demonstrate what makes them different.
Responses are tightly formatted. Pricing is prescribed. Narrative sections are constrained. Word limits compress nuance into generic capability statements.
The ability to explain how your firm actually delivers legal services, through judgement, responsiveness, strategic advice, sector understanding, or partner accessibility, is there, but not always easy to bring forward.
Ironically, the very things that often matter most in professional services procurement can become the hardest things to properly articulate within the format.
As a result, firms can find themselves competing heavily on compliance, formatting, and pricing structure rather than genuine differentiation.
The issue is not whether firms can respond
Most national and mid-tier firms absolutely can respond.
The question is whether they should.
Over time, that imbalance starts to shape behaviour. Not because firms lack capability, but because repeated experience changes the commercial calculation.
It may take a few tenders that absorb more time than expected. A few panel appointments that generate less work than anticipated. A few late nights spent answering peripheral compliance questions for a modest regional panel opportunity.
Over time, the pattern becomes clearer.
As one colleague once put it, behaviour often only changes once it costs them enough time or money.
This is where BDMs and bid managers matter
This is also where business development teams and bid managers have an important role to play.
Not just in coordinating responses, but in shaping the decision to respond in the first place.
That can mean pushing back:
on the scope of the response effort
on unrealistic turnaround expectations
on partner assumptions about opportunity value
and sometimes on whether the opportunity is commercially worth pursuing at all
In some cases, the best bid strategy may genuinely be “no bid”.
That can be uncomfortable in firms where panel opportunities carry prestige or where government work is viewed as strategically important.
But disciplined selectivity is part of mature bid strategy too.
Not all councils are the same
Of course, there are important exceptions.
Large metropolitan councils such as Brisbane City Council or Auckland Council operate at a different scale altogether. The sophistication, volume of work, and strategic value can justify a far greater investment in pursuit.
And many local government clients are excellent to work with once relationships are established.
This is not an argument against local government work.
It is simply a reminder that firms should assess these opportunities with clear eyes.
Because sometimes the hardest question in bidding is also the simplest one:
Be honest.
Is this one actually worth responding to?