The modern approach to private client investment management contrasts sharply with many solicitors' firms' traditional ways of working - it is team-based and systematic, like a production line.

There is no room for an individual investment manager's idiosyncratic methods of making investment decisions or looking after files.

Only at the original point of reception from and delivery to the client is the process personalised, and these stages are handled with an intense attention to individual detail and service.

Interestingly, the approach may have other applications in the solicitors' firm, and provide the key to better service and higher profits elsewhere.Private client investment management is an information-intensive task; apart from personal information on the client and his or her bank accounts, tax details, etc, a welter of information on each shareholding has to be tracked, for example, its official name, type, SEDOL number, history in the client's hands for capital gains tax purposes, price, certificate number, registration details and location.

Each client or family may also have multiple portfolios: a husband and wife may have individual holdings, joint holdings, general and single company PEPs, children's or other family settlements.

In addition there are rights issues, bonus splits, takeovers and dividends to collect or pay out on time for what will become hundreds of clients.When faced with this challenge, the only way to maintain quality control and consistency of results is to install a highly systematic approach throughout the business.

The whole enterprise's success will be crucially determined by the quality of the administration.

It has often been said, and rightly, that if the administration is good clients will forgive investment mistakes, but not vice versa.

The only practical handle which most clients have on their investment managers' quality is whether their initials are the wrong way round, their postcodes muddled up, their dividends arrive late, their valuations ignore rights issues, their capital gains tax allowances are forgot ten or tobacco shares are bought against orders.Ensuring a high level of quality and security in an operation of this complexity requires solid experience in the operational head as well as the chief investment decision maker.

This experience should have been forged in a 'control culture', where documentation of procedures, double checking disciplines, computer literacy and the ability to serve but stand up to client managers is ingrained.

Direct experience in securities administration is certainly preferable, but need not have been obtained at the full Stock Exchange settlement level.The surest route to administrative quality is to control the source of information on what is happening to securities and their physical custody.

This can only be done through registering securities at the solicitor investment manager's address and preferably in its nominee company's account.

This ensures that all relevant documents, payments and notifications pass through the firm, eliminating most of the errors which have traditionally hounded private client investment work: lost certificates, clients on holiday when documents need signing, changes of address not notified to the registrar, the allotment letter thrown away etc.Computer software for handling client portfolio, securities, tax and cash information is essential but can be bought in at a much lower cost than may be expected.

Up-front software costs can certainly be kept under £10,000.

Unfortunately, no systems provider has yet produced a single package which satisfies each of the investment manager, trust administrator and solicitors' accountant.One firm has bravely set out to build its own application which is integrated with its other mainstream systems, but most will take the view that this is a high risk solution.

The low cost, low risk approach is to accept that the investment management system will be a separate PC-based package run parallel to the firm's mainstream systems and that its cash-tracking module will have to be regularly reconciled to the firm's main accounts system.Amongst other attributes, the software will need to have a capital gains tax tracking capability, produce smart client reports and allow investment managers to see holders of a specified share or those with less than a specified percentage in a specified asset sector.

It will need to be able to record PEP investments appropriately (although not necessarily generate the administrative returns to the Inland Revenue which can be produced on separate spreadsheets).The package should provide the kernel of the nominee system for custody of client securities, although spreadsheets can again be used as a supplement.

Standards in this area can be expected to change and rise as Crest is introduced and the regulators turn their attention to the so-called regulatory black hole, which many claim investment nominee companies represent.An equally systematic approach to the investment decision-making process itself is required if the firm is to have confidence in providing a uniformly high quality service.

The days of individual stockbrokers within the same company each backing their own hunches based on what their friends may have whispered to them in the bar over the weekend should be over.

They have no place in a solicitors' investment management operation.There should be a disciplined investment process, understood and followed by all client managers, first for understanding clients' requirements and formulating an appropriate strategy and, secondly, for setting and maintaining the appropriate asset allocat ion and stock selection decisions to implement the strategy.

Requirements include a system for allotting clients to a broad category of investment objective (ranging from outright capital growth through to such a high level of income that capital may be depleted in a disciplined way), and maintaining long-run benchmark asset allocations for each category, together with more immediately tactical model allocations.Stock selection should be limited to a relatively restrained universe of shares which meet criteria defined in terms of market position, earnings and dividend record, balance sheet strength, management depth, research coverage etc.

Each stock on the list should be rated regularly in grades ranging from outright buy to sell.

For each stock, the word-processing system should ideally hold one standard paragraph to back up a new purchase or sale recommendation and another to be included in reports, covering recent trends and results or the outlook.

Naturally the paragraphs will require some tailoring to the individual client but the core will be universal.To exaggerate only a little, the aim should be to provide such investment support systems as would enable the newly arrived Martian to pick up any client file, assemble an appropriate new portfolio or adjust the existing holdings and explain the action taken to the client, all according to house policy and systems - providing of course that he or she has passed the Law Society's new securities and investment management competence requirements en route!Last but not least, there are the systems required to ensure compliance with the Financial Services Act and the Solicitors Investment Business Rules, or their Scottish equivalents.

A systematic approach again provides the key to sound sleep for the compliance officer.Systems should start by limiting staff allowed to handle this type of business to those with the right expertise, and who have received the necessary training in the firm's procedures, including for compliance.Via documented procedures, available and communicated to all relevant staff, the systems should capture the necessary steps in each of the compliance-sensitive steps of the investment process: client induction, transaction decisions, half-yearly portfolio reporting, annual securities listing etc.

They may take the form of a checklist at the front of the file for induction steps or a printed dealing slip for transaction records, each prompting and requiring set pieces of information, which can be geared to operational as well as compliance needs.Rather than suffer a mad panic in the few days immediately before a Law Society inspection visit, a regular and rolling review of compliance standards should be installed.

Some checks may be carried out weekly, more will be made monthly and a few may only justify a quarterly or even an annual check - is a current Law Society authorisation certificate hanging on the wall? At the heart of this rolling review system will be spot checks on a monthly quota of files, both new and well established.

Faults picked up during these checks may point not only to individual errors but to a more basic weakness in the system which needs putting right - this is equally true of an individual client's comments or complaint.The list of systems needing to be set up may sound daunting and cannot of course be established overnight.

Nor can all be in place by day one.

It is the systematic culture which is important and the key to sustainable quality and success.

Once installed, the systems quickly become part of the psyche and save m any hours of subsequent work - the wheel does not have to be reinvented for each client.

Systems with both a small and a large 's' ultimately allow the investment service to be economically delivered to a controllable quality.

Apart from anything else, that is what clients want.