Most law firms will maintain that they invest plenty of money and effort into keeping their staff content and well-trained.

Some, however, have sought an Investors in People (IiP) accreditation to prove this to the satisfaction of an outside organisation.With some exceptions, solicitors are generally conservative in their approach to adopting modern management techniques.

They tend to embrace them only when they must.

For example, the take-up rate of legal aid franchises began to accelerate only once it became apparent there would be no legal aid work without one.Solicitors who have an IiP kitemark attribute a range of curative effects to it, from better trainee examination results to higher profits.

Sceptics see IiP as a job creation scheme for marketing types and a management fad that will do little or nothing for their practices.According to Investors in People UK (IiP UK), the national accreditation body, the number of firms reaching the required standard is still low.

They tend to be smaller firms, with only a handful of City firms having expressed an interest.At the end of 1996 there were just 50 fully accredited solicitors' firms out of a total of about 10,000 firms.

At the beginning of 1996 there had been 28.

The number of solicitors firms which made a commitment to seek an IiP kitemark numbered 331 at the end of 1996 and 379 at the beginning.

Nationally, 5,247 organisations now have an IiP accreditation.IiP UK believes the slow take-up rate among solicitors is partly because firms are waiting for the Law Society's much delayed practice management standards (PMS) certification scheme, which was scheduled to begin this month.

It is now expected to be launched in mid-1997.IiP UK's sector development manager, Ian Luxford, suspected that many firms intended to seek IiP and PMS at the same time.

He said that the advantage of doing the two simultaneously was that it meant 'pulling up the corporate floorboards' -- that is, causing disruption to the workplace -- once instead of twice.Other firms, said Mr Luxford, are run on traditional lines and believe that external accreditation is unnecessary.

'They feel they are already working to high standards and there is no need to do more,' he explained.One problem is that many partnerships are uneasy about bringing in an outside body to intervene in their established working practices.

But the benefits of using external assessors are huge, argued Mr Luxford.

'The IiP standard shouldn't be seen as an invasive, regulatory process.

It's not so much a compulsory MOT test as a voluntary annual service,' he said.Law Society past president Martin Mears probably speaks for many of those solicitors who have shunned IiP.

'If you want to become efficient, you do it,' he said.

'You don't need kitemarks to stick over your door.' The only reason to go for IiP, added Mr Mears, would be to gain some kind of advantage, for instance if it was required to qualify for local authority contracts.

He added that he was absolutely in favour of good management practices.The number of solicitors' firms which have taken up IiP suggest that Mr Mears' view is fairly widely held.

However, those few who have undergone the rigours of obtaining the IiP standard, praise it to the skies.

Staff are happier, they are better informed about the work of colleagues, and clients are much better served, said Sharon Babb, practice manager at two partner Devon-based firm Hollinshead & Co.According to Tony Reiss, marketing director at Cameron Markby Hewitt (CMH), obtaining an IiP kitemark had done these wonders: one in three graduates now accepted job offers at the firm as against one in seven before IiP; less staff training was needed; the staff were more efficient and staff turnover had diminished.Mr Reiss' only regret was that CMH will lose its IiP accreditation when the firm merges with McKenna & Co on 1 May 1997, because McKenna & Co has not embraced IiP.Christina Myers, director of Law South, a group of 11 firms employing a total of 1,492 staff, said four of her members had committed to IiP.

She described it as a 'fairly long-winded process', but definitely worth it.

IiP encouraged firms to invest in staff, and to give them better training and a stronger sense of their role within the firms, she said.Perhaps the boldest claim for IiP, made by the head of training at a large practice, was that newly-qualified lawyers were citing the firm's kitemark as the key factor in their decision to seek an interview.

Apparently they believed that IiP would afford them some protection from being 'worked to the bone' by the firm without any commitment to their welfare in return.