Solicitors increasingly bemoan the burgeoning overheads which burden their practices.

One solution being applied in other professions is teleworking, where staff work from a private office at their home or elsewhere.

Due to the often individual nature of solicitors' work, the legal profession is one of the most suited to teleworking.Teleworking offers substantial benefits to law firms: clients can be offered lower rates and may have greater accessibility to solicitors after hours.

It is our experience that firms will have reduced overheads, increased profit margins, greater productivity and more working hours.

And solicitors and support personnel will have to travel less, greater control over working time, less conflict between work and personal responsibilities and a more relaxed and comfortable environment.Equipment required by teleworking personnel will include: a personal computer (£1500 plus VAT); a printer (£600 plus VAT); a modem (£150 plus VAT); a plain paper fax machine (£900 plus VAT); and word-processing software (£250 plus VAT).

The total cost of equipping such an office would be £3400.

A photocopier is also highly desirable.

An appropriate telephone system would be required to connect incoming calls to remote sites.

The BT Meridian Norstar 8+24 costs about £2500.

Fee-earners at different sites can organise conference calls with a number of parties using standard telephone services.Written communication between personnel can be either by facsimile or, preferably, by electronic mail.

This involves a personal computer being connected via a modem to another computer through the public telephone system -- including mobile networks -- or via a network.

One option is an internal mailbox system such as Lotus cc:Mail or WordPerfect Office, where the fee-earner can dial in to collect any mail from a personal mailbox.

Another option is an electronic mail and information network like Internet, CompuServe and LINK.

A third is a wide area network (WAN) whereby messages can be sent direct to another person's computer.

Finally, communications packages such as Winfax Pro enable messages and documents to be sent from one computer to another.Incoming mail can be delivered to fee-earners by fax, post or -- if it has been scanned by an imaging processor -- electronically.

Library services can be provided by the firm electronically or through electronic services such as those available from LINK, Lexis, Lawtel, Justis On-Line and LIX.

Remote working is further enhanced by video communications, which can be purchased for around £2500 per workstation.R.13 of the Solicitors Practice Rules 1990 lays down the minimum standards of supervision and management in relation to a solicitor's office when it is open to the public or open to telephone calls from the public.

The rule requires daily supervision of the office by a solicitor who has been admitted for at least three years.

This imposes an important restriction as neither solicitors with less than three years' experience nor support personnel can operate from an office open to telephone calls from the public if that office is unsupervised.There are a number of additional obstacles associated with teleworking.

Some people do not have the space at home or cannot abide the idea of working from home.

In such cases, a satellite office may be more appropriate and this may be shared.Another major issue is secretarial support.

Increasingly, keyboard skills are likely to become a part of every fee-earner's working life.

Voice-recognition systems are now offering an accurate and user-friendly method of dictating directly into a computer.

However, some tasks will always be best delegated to a secretary.

On-site secretarial assistance, whether part-time or full-time, may be required.

A certain amount of secretarial support can also be provided off-site.Certain types of work are not suited to teleworking, particularly where there is daily physical collaboration or control, such as in debt collection.

The traditional method of training solicitors by situating them close to their mentor also requires review in a teleworking situation.

Communication by telephone, electronic means and by video is possible but the benefits of physical proximity are lost.Teleworking offers a viable operational method for solicitors.

The losers are landlords, transport operators and petrol companies.Introducing teleworking-- Can space in the firm's current offices be vacated or sub-let?-- Are the firm's personnel willing to try teleworking?-- Are there any departments in which teleworking would not be appropriate?-- Is the firm willing to invest in the necessary systems?Case studyCity firm Davis & Co provides a broad range of services to corporate clients as well as specialist services to other law firms, including due diligence for mergers and acquisitions.

By offering flexible working practices, the firm has attracted high calibre solicitors, now numbering around 20, who had previously been with top City and provincial firms.Christopher Davis, the founder of Davis & Co, had headed the due diligence group at McKenna & Co and had worked in-house at Eagle Star and Abbey National.

In establishing the firm, he wished to avoid the high overheads which force up fees charged to clients whilst maintaining the high standards of a City firm.Since 1993 Davis & Co's fee-earners operate from a network of private offices connected via LINK's e-mail system.

A central office is used to meet clients, to receive mail and facsimiles, and to handle other managerial and administrative functions.