When Stephen Sykes went on secondment to the project that went on to become Certa, he did not expect that he would be leaving Hammond Suddards for ever.

Environmental lawyers do not have a reputation as natural entrepreneurs, but for Mr Sykes, the thrill of building up a business from scratch, and being 'more than just a lawyer' was such that after considerable deliberation and some sleepless nights, he knew he would not be going back to Hammond Suddards.

Mr Sykes was a senior assistant, and partnership was imminent.

But he says he has no regrets.

'This suits me better.

I don't think I could ever go back to a back room in a law firm,' he says.

Certa is a 15-strong company and, unusually for such a small operation, it handles its legal work in-house.

Certa's second in-house lawyer, Andrea Muirhead, explains: 'We don't use outside lawyers at all because the work we are doing, designing insur ance policies, can only really be learnt by working for Certa.' Certa was initiated in 1995 as a result of the expansion of one of its backers, risk management consultants Thomas Miller & Co.

At its inception, the exact brief of the company had not been set in stone, despite a notion that it should pool and market the expertise of a multi-disciplinary band of environmental consultants.

But after what Mr Sykes calls 'an extended listening process', it became clear to the group that potential clients -- large industrial and manufacturing companies, utilities and government agencies -- needed the services of a company that could reduce the risk of owning, buying or selling 'brownfield' or contaminated sites.

Certa is a risk assessment service which evaluates the risks from contamination, and then certifies the land accordingly.

It also provides bespoke insurance products that remove a measure of uncertainty from the possession or transfer of such land.

Mr Sykes says that often transactions are postponed for years because of disagreement between parties as to what a site is really worth, or where the burden of the risk should lie.

Certification and/or insurance can be brought in -- often, he says, at the 11th hour -- to ease transactions that would not otherwise proceed, or where the site owner would have no other recourse other than to accept a reduced price, or offer complicated and costly indemnities to potential buyers.

For Certa's lawyers, this involves assessing the legal liabilities associated with a transaction and designing bespoke insurance to transfer risks away from either party.

Ms Muirhead says: 'It's innovative work.

If neither buyer nor seller will give a warranty, if you can come in and design a new insurance solution which means neither party has to bear the risk, you can free up a deal.' Mr Sykes admits that his first interest in environmental law stemmed from his love of nature.

'I'm a signed up member of Greenpeace', he says.

'I'm really a great outdoors person.' He admits that Certa's solutions have more to do with the health of balance sheets than the health of the environment, but in a tenuous sense at least, they have green credentials.

'There's much more emphasis now on reducing development on greenfield sites.

What we do is to remove much of the uncertainty of developing or otherwise transacting on sites that have been used.' Mr Sykes says that he started to get hooked at the drawing board stage.

'There was a lot of brainstorming.

It required a great deal of lateral thinking and pragmatism and a lot of different inputs.

We must have had literally hundreds of meetings with people representing every aspect of the industry.' His legal input was to assess the liabilities under environmental and clean-up law associated with the potential transactions.

By 1996, says Mr Sykes, the company had brought together a band of the best environmental consultants in the country, and set about establishing a standard by which environmental risk could be measured.

Part of the research process involved Mr Sykes travelling to the west coast of the US and looking at how similarly intentioned companies had developed a multi-disciplinary, legal/technical interface.

Although in most cases, this kind of operation was still in its infancy.

Having established exactly what its mandate was, the next stage for Certa was to attract a major insurance company and to persuade it that Certa had both the legal and technical appreciation of the liabilities that brownfield sites can give rise to, and sufficient commercial nous to make it vi able.

Allianz Cornhill International, part of the triple 'A' rated Allianz Group, had enjoyed a long relationship with Thomas Miller & Co, and saw that they were being offered a unique opportunity.

The critical part for Mr Sykes as a lawyer lay in drawing up the underwriting agreement with Allianz that effectively outsourced the risk management of the venture to Certa, or 'handing over the pen' as the insurance trade has it.

Mr Sykes was aware that this was a major undertaking on behalf of Allianz, especially as the initiative came from Certa, and not the insurer.

Mr Sykes's departure from Hammond Suddards was amicable.

He joined the project in December 1995, and made his decision to stick with Certa public in January 1998.

Hammonds had always taken a strong interest in Certa, and acted for the company when it was set up.

'I haven't got any regrets about leaving,' he says, 'but of course it took a lot of soul-searching.

The choice was between setting up an environmental law department at Hammond Suddards, or staying at Certa.' Hammond Suddards is now nearly 1,500-strong; Certa currently employs 15 people.

Mr Sykes says that the change in scale 'makes me more visible.

Now I'm out there bringing in the business, meeting with lawyers on a different basis'.

Certa's second lawyer, Ms Muirhead, joined at the beginning of the year from SJ Berwin.

Ms Muirhead has always demonstrated an interest that lies beyond black-letter law.

She studied law with French at Leicester University, but having taken her Law Society Finals was unsure as to whether she wanted to enter private practice.

For some time she worked in the urban development and environmental management department of Leeds Metropolitan University, and completed an MA in corporate waste management.

Ms Muirhead then joined Browne Jacobson, where she took her articles, first in the firm's Nottingham office, and then in London.

When a job in the environmental law department of SJ Berwin came up, Ms Muirhead took it, but joined Certa in January after only one year as a qualified lawyer in private practice.

So far, she says, she enjoys the intimacy of working in a smaller environment, and says that the 'hands-on', multi-disciplinary aspect of Certa gives her a greater feeling of transactional involvement.

'The great thing is that you can see the cheques coming in,' she says.

A constant theme generated by Certa's work is the variety of skill sets that the in-house lawyer must bring to bear.

If a potential client is interested in using Certa, says Ms Muirhead, 'we'll send someone technical and someone legal to meet with the client and their advisers.

Then we'll be able to come to an understanding of what their unacceptable risks are, and gather as much technical information, documentation and relevant documents before drafting a proposal.' Ms Muirhead says: 'I work on a daily basis with technical and commercial teams -- I feel I've learnt more in the last six months than I'd learnt in the last two or three years.

It's much more stimulating here.

I wanted more commercial exposure than I was getting at SJ Berwin, where what I did was more paperwork-based'.

It is intended that the company grows as market forces dictate, and Mr Sykes will be recruiting more lawyers.

But they will have to be comfortable operating in what is a 'non-traditional role'.

Certa is a small company, and Mr Sykes and Ms Muirhead say they are now 'hybrids'.

The key skill, Mr Sykes says, is the ability to be a specialist generalist.

'You need to have a specialist understanding of environmental liability, and a genera l understanding of insurance law.

But you also have to be able to be able to be involved with and handle transactions.' Mr Sykes is also the Certa company secretary, and is fully involved with the sales-side of promoting Certa's 'solutions'.

It is a far cry, perhaps, from partnership at Hammond Suddards, but Mr Sykes adds: 'I've stolen a two- or three-year march on most of my old colleagues and I'm not really comfortable with the lawyer tag any longer'.