Losing a client to a rival is a double blow.

Not only have the lawyers lost the business, but time has to be wasted digging out the papers and files to hand on.Within practices that have a family or personal angle to the work, the departure of lawyers to a different firm can often herald clients switching sides.Professional niceties are such that when they announce new recruits, most firms do not gush about the work coming their way, let alone say who the clients are.

However, such is the sense of competition nowadays that this protocol does not always hold good.

When London firm Mishcon de Reya brought in Monica Blake, formerly head of retail and leisure at DJ Freeman, earlier this month, th e press release noted that her 'substantial client following' included L'Oreal.Nigel Moore, a pensions partner at City firm CMS Cameron McKenna, says: 'In the emotional sense, once you've got over the disappointment of losing the work, you've then got to steel yourself to do something non-chargeable -- fishing out the papers -- which is always difficult anyway.'Though firms and corporate clients spend more time than ever learning one anothers' procedures and cultures, so that the relationship is comfortable and close, clients are still switching law firms much more than they used to, and not simply because their favourite partner has jumped ship.Jane Storer, quality director of Birmingham-based Wragge & Co, says sometimes it is because there has been a dispute between client and law firm, but more usually because clients hold periodic beauty parades, or a client has outgrown a lawyer and needs more sophisticated and complex legal service, or vice versa, and the client needs a less expensive law firm.Mr Moore says in his personal experience firms handing work over have always done their best to be co-operative.Partly, it seems, there is still a degree of professionalism that means even jilted solicitors are willing to help smooth the switch to a rival.

'I would like to think solicitors are grown-ups,' says Laurence Bennett, a member of the Law Society Council and former chairman of the Society's high street task force.Alison Bond, client service director and partner at national firm Pinsent Curtis Biddle, adds: 'It is now a fact of life that clients change solicitors.

Solicitors would be upset if losing the work were a reflection of the quality of their legal advice.

But it is not as important for most clients as we like to think it is.

There are a lot of other factors as well.'On top of that professional obligation, a degree of enlightened self-interest on behalf of firms will encourage them to be helpful.

A client may consider coming back to the firm in future, perhaps in a different area of work, but will be put off if the attitude at the hand-over has been less than helpful.

And the bad word would be passed on to other prospective clients.Mr Moore says: 'You don't want your image besmirched.

You hope to have a good relationship with everybody.'Some practice areas are more problematical than others to transfer.

With regard to pensions, Mr Moore says the demands he has to make from the firms who have lost the work are not onerous: 'It is unusual, frankly, that we take a huge file of correspondence from the previous firm.

We do try to get from them the various deeds and rules of the pension scheme.'He says of the documents: 'They don't arrive by return of post, but they do appear.

If I had to stick out for 30 or so files, it might take longer.'In other practice areas, the client and original firm may be inextricably involved in a number of projects, and the working relationship may have to continue for some time after the decision to change, so the three parties -- client, old solicitor and new solicitor -- have to continue in a sort of legal love triangle for a period of time.Ms Storer says that in the case of a hand-over it is probably better for the first firm to complete outstanding business, partly because it will be clearer which solicitor has liability for the work.

But that course of action is easier when the practice area is something like property management, or volume work, where it is a case of setting up good systems between the firms.'If the change has brought in major litigation issues, it migh t not be possible.

Completing work in progress is more practical for short-term than long-term projects,' she says.The more amicable the circumstances of the parting of ways between client and lawyers, the easier it is to work in parallel, she says.

Conversely, when relations have soured, the client is more likely to want to make a clean break with the old lawyers, and take everything to the new ones straight away.'If there has been a dispute, the papers might not be in as good order as they ought to be,' she says.The degree of harmony of transfer often depends on the reason behind the client's change of solicitor.

Tension can develop when a partner or employee has moved and the client has followed.Mr Bennett, a partner at Liverpool firm Gregory Abrams, says these days there is a greater attachment among clients to the individual solicitor rather than the firm.Pinsent Curtis Biddle recently took over Rover cars' intellectual property work from Martineau Johnson, which in turn had taken it from Wragges.

In each case, it was following the solicitor concerned, Marie McMorrow.

Both transfers were amicable, but that is not always the case.Mr Bennett says: 'I have known of arguments to the point of litigation against the individual for enticing clients.' Ms Bond says law firms -- like advertising firms -- try to include no-poaching clauses in contracts, but they are not always enforceable.Even with goodwill on all sides, problems may still be generated by the complexity of the work to be passed across.

In giving an example from his own practice area, Mr Moore says that pension schemes often date back 30 years.

He says: 'Putting together that paper trail can be difficult.

The client generally assumes the solicitor has everything, the solicitor assumes the client has it, and you often find a few gaps.'At the moment, we're taking over a lot of tribunal claims from a firm.

There's no unwillingness or lack of co-operation but it's very difficult to extract all the information you need.'Mr Bennett points out that though such things are the exception not the rule, a dispute between the original solicitor and the client over the bill means that papers will be withheld until it is settled, making it hard for the new firm to pick up the baton.'The procedures are the same for resolving a dispute over costs as they are normally.' That means it can take weeks or months.

'You can't carry on without the papers.

If it is in mid-conveyance, you can write to the other side and ask for a copy of the contract.

But if it is the deeds of the property, there is not much you can do.

Sometimes, the only way is to pay the bill under protest.'One reason the relationship and hand-over is less smooth and harmonious in smaller firms, Mr Moore surmises, is that there is less self-interest in doing the decent thing, because the small client has less influence on others and is unlikely to come back in future in the way a large corporate client might.He says: 'In the case of the sole practitioner who has lost the work and frankly doesn't want to spend the time to sort it out, you could get into a lot of difficulties.

You could just go round in ever-decreasing circles.

Weeks or months could go by.'But solicitors who do meet such obstacles should know that things could be worse, Mr Moore points out.

He says: 'If a pension scheme changes its actuary or administrator there always seems to be an unholy war going on.'There is incredible reluctance on the part of the outgoing actuary to release anything at all, and they often try to make a charge to rel ease.'