In-house lawyers could not have a more fiery champion of their higher court audience rights than Julian Armstrong.

The new chairman of the Law Society's Commerce & Industry (C&I) Group puts 'not giving an inch on the principle of one profession' at the top of his agenda.He has only scorn for the slender majority of barristers, judges and academics on the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee who recommended last June that the rights of employed solicitors should not be extended.

'To think that because in-house lawyers are giving real advice in real situations they are somehow lacking in independence betrays a profound misunderstanding both of business and the needs of directors,' says Mr Armstrong.

'The majority [on the committee] just had a knee-jerk reaction, a kind of 19th century snobbery about getting into trade.'Mr Armstrong speaks like a businessman.

He went into trade with Esso UK plc 23 years ago because the oil business had a 'romantic veneer' and became the company's general counsel in 1982.'It is critical for a business to receive independent advice,' he maintains.

'There is absolutely no use in telling directors what they want to hear in January and then having them prosecuted or having their transactions fall through in June because [the deals] were improperly drawn or structured.'Mr Armstrong also thinks that in-house lawyers in commerce and industry have an increasingly important role in the running of the businesses they work for.

Over the last ten years, he says, the business community has become more litigious.

Commerce has become more heavily legislated and regulated because of the impact of the EU and growing public perception of issues like the environment and safety at work.'As a result, directors feel far more personally at risk,' he says.

'They do not want to be exposed to the dangers of breaking the law.

Neither do they want the business strategies of their company being upset by successful litigation against them by people who find that they are on the wrong side of the bargain.

So the directors turn to their in-house lawyers as a kind of insurance policy -- reassurance that the transactions which they are proposing to engage in are lawful.'Inevitably there has been a very strong desire to build into the business process some kind of legal review which will guard against both illegality and the inability of an agreement to cope with changes in circumstances.'This greater dependence of directors on their in-house lawyers has, says Mr Armstrong, enhanced the way in which solicitors in private practice view their commerce and i ndustry counterparts.'In-house lawyers have come very close to the heart of the business,' he says.

'Directors were traditionally seen as the clients of the external lawyers.

But the role of private solicitors is, in many situations, no longer flexible enough to give directors the reassurance they need in the face of increased regulation and litigation.'In-house lawyers have not just risen in status because of increasingly risk-averse bosses.

They have gained recent power over their private practice colleagues because of the buyers' market which developed during the recession.

But Mr Armstrong thinks in-house lawyers have now advanced beyond what he calls the 'we-are-the-masters-now syndrome'.

They have realised that quality is just as important as price and that there are certain types of work, like conveyancing, which are usually best purchased on the open market.As the new chairman of the C&I Group, Mr Armstrong maintains that there are issues which unite the members of the group, who are often perceived as more loyal to their companies than to each other.

The relationship with external lawyers is a classic example.But Mr Armstrong also intends actively to seek out themes which unite in-house lawyers.

He will be responsible for implementing a scheme, planned under the previous leadership, to send out a questionnaire to all group members asking them what they want from the organisation.'I am very keen that as many solicitors as possible should tell us what they think,' he says.

'This is part of a process of establishing our connection with the constituency because we have not in the recent past rechecked signals from them.

We must cement our relationships with other groups in the Law Society which have similar interests, like the Solicitors European Group, and talk to groups like the Confederation of British Industry and the Bar Association for Commerce, Finance and Industry which are interested in the same things as our members.'Informing lawyers about conferences and discussions which the C&I Group already runs is also a priority.

'Our courses in Nottingham on how to succeed as in-house lawyers are now an integral part of the initiation rite of somebody coming to work in commerce and industry for the first time,' says Mr Armstrong.His own initiation took place after he left the commercial group at Clifford Chance, then Clifford Turner & Co, where he had completed his articles.

'My reason for the move is almost embarrassingly similar to the sort of things which people say to me now when they come for interview,' he says.

'They have found that in private practice they are responsible for a very small part of a big transaction.

They have no management role in respect of these transactions and they feel that as in-house lawyers they would get more responsibility and also avoid the trap of specialisation.'I left a firm where I had a lot of responsibility and enormously enjoyed myself.

But I wanted to get closer to the client and the business.'Once with Esso in 1975 he quickly became involved with lobbying the government over the Energy Act.

And he says that in-house lawyers have an important role to play in influencing forthcoming legislation.'In 1977 I moved to Esso Europe where I acted as the lawyer for a project in the Ivory Coast,' he said.

'We constructed an off-shore oil field.

It was not a very big one, it was not very grand, but I was the lawyer for the operator and it was a miniature, a test for what afterwards became the major work.

Esso was trying me out to see how I could cope.

I had a lot of fun, it wen t very well and I found myself called into my boss's office in 1982 and to my complete astonishment I was offered the job of general counsel for the UK.'