The London Development Agency (LDA) has overhauled its legal team - splitting the group into four divisions.

The 20-strong function has been split into groups dealing with public and corporate law, governance, property planning and commercial matters.

The overhaul was kick-started by general counsel Debbie Adams, who joined the organisation in January and has since expanded the team significantly, hiring nine lawyers between January and
September.

Adams told Legal Week: "One of the issues was to look at structure and how we support the LDA and how we could get value for money with our legal work.

"We will outsource low-volume, high-risk work and bring more interesting and complex work in-house as we can add more value now and better understand the business risk."

With the in-house team restructured, Adams is now focusing on external advisers, launching a review which is set to cut the size of the LDA legal panel down from 18 firms to around six. Current advisers include DLA Piper, Eversheds and Bircham Dyson Bell.

Firms will be asked to submit their tenders electronically using the LDA's business contract website, CompeteFor.

Adams said: "I will be formally writing to my external lawyers inviting them to tender. We will be looking to refresh our existing firms and maybe add a few new ones."