When it was announced that Digby Jones was to become the first solicitor to take the top job at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), there was some chuntering in the City pages of the national press that he might not have been the organisation's first choice.

There had been a long trawl to find a successor to Adair Turner, said some, and in the end Mr Jones was not a household name throughout big business in Britain.

If that sort of grumbling smarts, the exuberant former senior partner of Birmingham and London-based law firm Edge Ellison does not let it show.

The 44-year-old partner has embraced the director-general's post as though it were the job of his dreams - and perhaps it is.Mr Jones started his career in the law with articles at Edges in 1978.

He was made a partner in the property and commercial department in 1984, and gradually began to make a name in corporate finance, playing a key role in many of the management buy-outs, and major merger and acquisition deals in the west midlands.

He was promoted to deputy senior partner in 1990 and moved into the top slot five years later.

From those positions he was the prime mover behind the firm's expansion into the capital in 1991, and its forming of links in Europe and the US.But two years ago, Mr Jones made a dramatic jump, leaving private legal practice to join the top five accountancy firm KPMG as vice-chairman of corporate finance.

It is that shift in professional emphasis which more than likely put Mr Jones on track to becoming the CBI's director-general.

Although he was a CBI member while still at Edges - becoming vice-chairman of the West Midlands Regional Council in 1997 and chairman a year later - it is at least debatable that he would not have got the job had he stayed in legal practice.'KPMG gave me a wider pitch on which to play,' says Mr Jones from the CBI head offices at Centre Point in London, just before formally taking up the top position this week.

'It also gave me more visibility and exposure to major public companies.

But the fact that Edge Ellison was in both Birmingham and London and that I was effectively the chief executive of the business - that I had actually run the firm rather than just being a legal adviser - played quite a large role in the CBI's choice.'Mr Jones maintains that solicitors are wrongly perceived as knowing next to nothing about running a business.

'It is very unfair because while in all major firms you get a lot of partners who are technical legal advisers and happy to be so, every firm in the land has partners who run the business, generate the business, make sure people are managed, that the cash is collected and that the bills are paid.'But it is an entirely different matter as to whether or not they make good businessmen.

Mr Jones says that because many company/commercial specialist lawyers work closely with high risk-taking clients, they believe they can easily adapt to the philosophical and intellectual rigours required of being captains of industry.

'But there are a lot of of lawyers who move into that field and who do not succeed.

And that's because the one thing lawyers are taught at grandma's knee to do is to advise on risk but not necessarily to take risk.'Nonetheless, there are some 100 law firm members of the CBI spread around the country.

And Mr Jones beams with pride when referring to his original profession's contribution to the UK's place on the international business stage, pointing to recent figures from British Invisibles showing that UK law firms earned nearly £800 million through exporting legal services in 1998.

'Law firms get an unfair press when it comes to headlines saying fat cats are charging fortunes.

Because without the major law firms - both in London and in the regions - then a lot of work in growth and development of British business would not be done.'Mr Jones is convinced that firms have an important position in the domestic business scene.

'Law firms play a valuable role in the development of business communities.

Partners tend to be in their localities for a long time.

Because of that, they provide great stability and development for a region, and they tend to be very loyal to a region.'But as the new millennium dawns, Mr Jones is adamant that the shape of legal practice will change rapidly and that lawyers can ill-afford to be complacent.

He welcomes moves towards both limited liability partnership and multi-disciplinary partnerships (MDPs).

The faster the former gets on the statute books the better, he maintains, saying: 'Given that law firms are subject to all the same rigours and financial pressures of the market that are experienced by any other business, they should be entitled to the protections of other businesses.'He views MDPs as inevitable.

'I find it difficult to understand why MDPs are not allowed.

We are close to observing them in the writ if not in the reality and it is about time that the regulation caught up with the practice.

It would be better for the profession to espouse them and deal with them and to have an eye on what clie nts want.

I am sure there are many clients who won't want an MDP service, but the market should decide which form of practice will succeed over the medium-term.'Along with changes to the structure and form of partnerships, Mr Jones predicts a wider rationalisation and contraction in the profession.

He forecasts two or three tiers of company/commercial law firms - with 15 to 20 at the top end.

'They have almost left town and are now operating in a global world.

They still have their own threats, but those threats are in Wall Street, Frankfurt, Singapore - not Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester.'At the second tier, he sees a prosperous niche element working in fields such as aircraft leasing and shipping.

The more worrying level is the third tier which he describes as probably between 50 to 100 firms 'that are either second division City or premier league in a region'.

Mr Jones adds: 'They are smashing it out everyday and over the medium-term there will be huge rationalisation taking place in that sector.

You will get mergers and you will also see relative decline.

Some firms, either through a lack of ability to invest or loss of people, will move into decline and get left behind.

Others will come together or have particular unique selling points that will allow them to get to the top of the new pile.'If these predictions are right, by the end of Mr Jones' five-year term at Centre Point, the legal profession could look dramatically different.