An All-of-Government contract with over 50 providers offering external legal services in 9 areas of law.
The external legal services (ELS) contract allows agencies to procure the services of legal specialists outside of their internal teams. Below you can find information on what the contract does and does not cover, how to use the contract, and details on any features and costs included.
Changes were made to the external legal services contract and its Memorandum of Understanding in 2025. These changes related to terms for the engagement of barristers sole and AoG requirements regarding data protection. The contract can now also be accessed through our procurement platform, Procure Connect.
The contract can be used by agencies for specialist services or additional capacity for in-house government legal teams. It can also be used to outsource legal functions of small agencies over entire areas of law or for particular programmes of work and project teams.
The contract covers all external legal services in the following areas of law:
The Areas of law page has more details about what each area covers.
The contract does not cover:
Core Crown legal matters are described in the Cabinet Directions for the conduct of Crown Legal Business 2016. They include:
The Cabinet Directions do not apply to:
If you are not sure if your requirement is a core Crown legal matter, contact the Crown Law Office for advice.
There are over 50 providers of various sizes on the contract. They offer external legal services under one or more areas of law. You can use any provider on the contract for any or all of the areas (or sub-areas) of law within the scope of this contract.
To use this contract, you first have to join. There is more information on the joining process in the section below.
Once you have joined the contract, you will need to determine your requirements.
Then, you can directly source a provider from the contract, or shortlist providers before selection.
Once you have chosen a provider, use a Legal Services Order (LSO) to record the terms agreed. The LSO template is in the Contract documents section on the top right of this page.
New Zealand Government Procurement (NZGP) will ask agencies to complete provider performance surveys during the term of the external legal services contract.
More detail on the selection process, pricing approach, and what to include in an LSO is on the Using the external legal services contract page.
Using the external legal services contract
The AoG external legal services contract is also accessible through Procure Connect. While using Procure Connect, contracts are referred to as panels.
If you already have an account on Procure Connect, you can navigate to the tool to begin the process. You can contact your account manager if you have any questions about the tool.
This contract offers:
Under this contract, providers offer a range of value-added services and are required to deliver particular broader outcomes.
Value-add services are offered free of charge by some panel providers to participating agencies. Agencies may request a provider to supply some or all of the value-add services they offer.
Value-add services may include:
The provider may refuse to provide value-add services where they are not currently providing external legal services to the participating agency and any of the following also apply:
Agencies who participate in the external legal services contract don't need to go through a full procurement process of their own, which saves time, effort and cost.
The rates offered by the providers are significantly more competitive than market rates.
Any rates increases during the term of the contract are tied to any increase to the Labour Cost Index. Providers may request rates increases only once each two-year term.
Most AoG contracts include an administration fee. This fee is a simple, effective and transparent way of recovering the cost of developing, sourcing, implementing and managing AoG contracts.
For the external legal service contract, the administration fee is 1.5% of the total charges invoiced by a provider (excluding GST and expenses).
Providers collect the administration fee from agencies via provider invoices and then pass the collected fee on to MBIE - agencies don't need to make any payments direct to MBIE.
To purchase external legal services using this contract, your agency or school first needs to join.
If this is the first AoG contract your organisation is joining, you’ll need to:
Find more detail on these three steps at Joining AoG contracts.
Once you have completed this process, or if you’re already using another AoG contract, the next step is to read:
If your agency agrees to the terms of the MoU, sign and submit the online joining form. The MoU and joining form are in the Joining documents section below. You need an agency login to access it.
Once we receive your joining form, we will be in touch to confirm that your agency or school is participating in the contract.
You can then begin purchasing external legal services using this contract.
This section contains information which may be commercially sensitive and should not be shared publicly.
To view this content, you must be logged in, approved for secure content access, and your agency must be signed up to the contract.
For assistance, please contact nzgppsystems@mbie.govt.nz
Each party has responsibilities they must meet as part of every AoG contract.