The key to management is that it is all about managing through other people.

In the case of law firms, those other people are lawyers, and the qualification that may be needed for that is a diploma in the venerable legal skill of cat-herding.As many managers comment, one of the problems is that lawyers tend to think that only other lawyers can understand their business and the peculiar problems that might arise in running it.

That view is confirmed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of law firms are managed by lawyers, rather than non-lawyers.

At the same time, many lawyers are resistant to the concept of being managers, whether because they realise that they are not managers, or because they want to step back from fee-earning.So, management is accepted as a different skill from being a lawyer, but lawyers can take time out to be trained.

For example, it is possible to get an MBA in legal practice management from Nottingham Law School, and there are now many specialist law management books, and management consultancies who target law firms.Law firms may have to have management structures to help them implement the Woolf reforms, standardise case management procedures and systems, comply with standards for legal aid franchising and meet the Law Society's own quality standard, Lexcel.Solicitor Nick Jarrett-Kerr, chief executive and chairman of the management board of leading south-west firm Bevan Ashford, says: 'Lawyers know that they have to be more commercial in how they manage their business, and professional management is what is needed; and it is possible for a lawyer to become a professional manager.

Equally, it is an option to bring in a non-lawyer to manage the firm -it depends on the firm, its size and where it is in terms of its maturity and growth, and whether you have someone within the firm who can do the job.'His personal view, subject to the constraints he has outlined, is that 'it is probably better for one of the partners to do it, because a partnership is a weird dynamic of individuals, no matter how corporate the structure or the use of titles such as chief executive officer or chief operating officer.

You can't escape the fact that the partners are essentially the shareholders and owners of the business, as well as the managers and workers.

What the partners have to learn is that there are rules which are capable of being enforced - and sometimes it is easier if it is one of their peers who is the the enforcer, rather than an outsider.'He does concede, however, that it is better to have someone good appointed from outside the firm than someone who is not up to the task from inside the firm.

And he adds that 'having good senior managers such as a finance director, human resources director, and IT manager all help in managing a firm profitably, but that option is not open to every firm.

You have to match the resources to what is affordable.'His firm has developed its management systems based on one of the blueprints for management put forward by management guru David Maister.

It is based on the health and hygiene approach, where hygiene is the utilisation of resources, getting the people to work harder, getting overheads under control, and dealing with underperformers, while the health aspect includes the leverage of fee-earners to partners, and Bevan Ashford has been following this dual health and hygiene approach for more than three years.Mr Jarrett-Kerr says: ' It is a particularly helpful way of managing the firm, and it has been adapted to suit the practice and its profitability.

If you just focus on the health side but are lax on the hygiene side, then the focus is too short-term, and equally, you cannot focus only on the hygiene side without managing the underlying health issues.'It is no longer rare to hear a lawyer talking in management speak - it has become inevitable.

But there are a few cases where a professional manager who is a non-lawyer runs a law firm - in the past, these included Christopher Honeyman Brown as managing partner at Alsop Wilkinson before it merged to become what is now DLA, and Alan Morris at City firm Simmons & Simmons before he left and was replaced by a traditional managing partner.

Chris Schulten is still chief executive at City firm Richards Butler.But one firm is bucking the trend - CMS Cameron McKenna, which has appointed a non-lawyer as its chief executive officer for the six-member international alliance CMS.

Speaking just before the appointment, chairman Richard Tyler said: 'Our ideal choice would be someone who is not a partner in any of the member firms.

Probably even more important is that the sort of skills such as project management and IT skills, which we want, are not only found among lawyers.'Mr Honeyman Brown, an accountant by training, is now a partner in the professional services group at Horwath Consulting.

He says: 'My own view is that an outsider has to work hand in glove with the lawyers who are seen to be the leaders of the practice to be effective.

One of the management roles is to flatten and shorten the learning curve on learning management discipline - you have to get the owners to be the enforcers.'Partnership expert Ronnie Fox, senior partner at City firm Fox Williams and a founding committee member of the Law Society's law management section, acknowledges that management is difficult and agrees that the type of person who becomes a successful solicitor is not often a natural manager.

He says: 'The challenge for solicitors is to be both a member of the profession and an effective person.'There is no either/or position, and it is not easy to reconcile professional with business demands - unless you are successful in business terms, you will run into difficulties in functioning as a professional firm.

The range of management tasks is wide: financial management, marketing, human resources and IT, and each is a major challenge.'With the management role in any professional firm becoming more complicated and onerous, should there be compulsory training? Mr Fox considers that all solicitors should undergo some basic training in terms of time management, client care, reputation creation, delegation skills, team building, and presentation, but adds: 'At the more senior level, the needs will obviously differ widely, and some solicitors have a natural aptitude, so compulsory training would be unnecessary.'And the issue of management affects firms of all sizes.

At 11-partner south-west firm Veitch Penny, managing partner Simon Young has the MBA from Nottingham Law School, where the others on his course included lawyers and non-lawyers from private practice and the public sector.He says more lawyers should undergo management training.

'It is quite surprising that not many do, and although it should not be compulsory, there certainly should be training on how to manage expectations such as for prospective new partners.

It is only comparatively recently that lawyers have woken up to the fact that they have to regard the law as a b usiness and to shift the focus to both the supply and the business side.'The way that the profession is developing, lawyers need to have, as Mr Young says 'using the management vernacular, a stratified delegation system'.But this exemplifies perhaps the greatest danger of all when embracing proper management, whether by a lawyer or not - using too much jargon.

Mr Young concurs: 'You know you have to stop when you can't write a love letter without using the word "paradigm".'