The impact of e-commerce is difficult to assess, but even harder to comprehend.

Some handle on its importance can be gained by the speed with which the Internet has penetrated western society.According to a report published by investment bank Schroders this week, it has taken four years for the commercial Internet to achieve 50 million users, compared with 13 years for television and 16 for the personal computer.

The report concludes: 'The pace of growth has shown few signs of slowing and an "Internet year" is now described as three months.'For lawyers, this has meant a whole new area of business, with opportunities for advising on the huge variety of legal issues facing e-businesses, which the government estimates carried out £2.8bn of transactions last year.

The volume of transactions over the Internet has the potential to grow tenfold over the next three years, the government believes, reaching around 4% of the UK's gross domestic product.

But the fact that the Internet is also an immensely powerful communication tool means that its impact on the growth of the economy will be substantially gr eater.Solicitors have been quick to recognise the requirements of this new sector and the opportunities its presents, although the UK still lags some way behind north America, Australia and Scandinavia in terms of Internet use.

The UK heads the European tree at 15% of the population, compared with 37% in the US, and is substantially ahead of Japan, and the Schroders' report indicates that the number of UK users is reaching a critical mass.Many firms now advertise their capability to advise companies engaged with e-commerce and for the first time this year the Chambers Directory includes a substantial section on e-commerce.

The clients fall into two broad categories: established companies that are already trading and the start-ups which begin by setting up the business on the Internet.

It is the start-ups that have made such an impact in the stock market, one example of which is Jelly Works, which was floated by 24-year-old Jonathan Rowland at the end of last year.

Shares in JellyWorks rose from their subscription price of 5p to a peak of 141p on 30 December 1999, giving it a market capitalisation of £286m.However, although it is clear that there is a new breed of Internet entrepreneurs, it is less clear, even among those who are known as e-commerce experts, that there is such thing as an e-commerce lawyer.

'The market may decide that a lawyer who is doing a great deal of work for e-commerce companies is an e-commerce lawyer,' says Michael Harts, a partner at Baker & McKenzie, 'but I think to satisfy client needs in the area you will need a mix of different practices.

The people who turn up to our e-commerce group represent about half a dozen different practice areas.'This is partly because at the moment there is no such a thing as e-commerce law.

One of the complicating factors for both business people and lawyers is that a new business environment is using laws written to apply to a different context entirely.

The government is putting through a Electronic Communications Bill at the moment, which is set to become law in spring this year.

The Bill will cover a relatively narrow range of issues including giving electronic signatures explicit legal recognition and removing existing laws which insist on the use of paper for legal documentation where it is possible to give people an electronic option.While these measures are welcomed by companies and consumers trading over the Internet, they only scratch at the legal issues that arise in e-commerce.

In fact, one of the important points about the growth and effectiveness of the Internet is the fact that it is subject to relatively little regulation.

As Adam Taylor, a partner at Withers, comments: 'There is no real e-commerce law as such.

At the moment what happens is that one simply has to apply existing laws by analogy.'Yet while a whole range of legal issues affect the Internet, from defamation to copyright, the core areas are the corporate finance work (which mostly involves raising money for Internet start-ups), a range of commercial and contract work (which includes Web site design, advertising contracts and infrastructure agreements), and branding related work (which involves such things as trademark and domain name issues).

And along with these core areas there are a number of firms and individuals who are becoming known as experts within the field (see table below).What differentiates these firms and solicitors who work in them is their experience and expertise in applying their legal nous to the world of e-commerce.

Liam McNeive, name partner in boutique firm McNeiv e Solicitors, which specialises in advising business involved in e-commerce including some of the biggest players in the market such as AOL and QXL, says: 'I think there are two main reasons people come to me.

One is understanding the practical ramifications of applying law to on-line commerce.

If you go to a conference, a lot of what you hear is quite academic and often doesn't answer the question.

We don't have that luxury.

We have to answer the question and we have to answer it pretty fast.'Secondly, I know people in the higher echelons of e-commerce in the UK -- and being able to talk to those people without feeling an underdog is important.

It's about understanding the business environment of on-line commerce.'Like most lawyers now specialising in e-commerce, Mr McNeive started out life as an IT lawyer, in his case at Nabarro Nathanson, moving to Denton Hall before setting up his own practice in 1998.

For other firms, the IT department also tends to be the focus of the e-commerce practice, drawing in lawyers from other specialties to a greater or lesser extent.Olswang, for example, feels it is becoming almost an e-commerce firm, as partner John Enser explains: 'We probably have a core of seven or eight partners and 15 to 20 other lawyers who are doing what I guess I would call pure e-commerce, but we haven't had a formal new media/e-commerce unit since 1992.

We set up a new media unit in 1986, but it rapidly dawned on us that to have a dedicated unit didn't work because everybody needed to understand the implications of the Internet, and now e-commerce pervades the whole practice.'For other lawyers, e-commerce is so new that they feel it is still developing as a specialism and they are reluctant to let go of their IT roots.

Michael Chissick, a partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse, comments: 'Most of the people making a name for themselves in this area are people who have handled IT law work.

But I think a lot of us, because it is so new, are reluctant to abandon our old IT practices, so we are double-handling and doing IT and e-commerce.'Mr Chissick estimates that his department is doing about 40 per cent e-commerce work and 60 per cent IT, although the e-commerce side is increasing daily.

One of the interesting comparisons is the difference between the clients on the IT side and those on the e-commerce side.

Chissick continues: 'The IT clients are very traditional and tend to be large organisations.

Nearly all of the e-commerce clients are very new.

You find people with 12 months' experience are considered old hands.'I have guys asking me questions you wouldn't normally expect, such as how to run the business, because they are very good at the technology and they've got the vision, but they don't have the ten years of business experience to deal with some of the detail.

So the role is different.

There's a lot of hand-holding, and we have to be a lot more proactive.

Unlike the older clients, they often don't know the questions to ask.'Many people have been predicting that the e-commerce bubble is going to burst, and that the over-valuation of Internet businesses by the stock markets will mean that the sector comes down with a bump.

However, lawyers working in the field feel that there is an underlying strength to the sector that will continue to bring in an increasing amount of work.

Olswang's Mr Enser says: 'I think there is a good six to nine months worth of frenzied activity left, and then in the next couple of years they'll be a huge amount of consolidation.

At the end of that there will be a hard core of strong e -commerce businesses which, hopefully, firms like us will continue to represent.'-- Leading Internet/e-commerce firmsBird & BirdClifford ChanceDenton HallField Fisher Water HouseMcNeive Solicitors-- Highly regarded firmsBaker & McKenzieHarbottle & LewisHenry HepworthHerbert SmithPaisner & CoKewp & CoTheodore Goddard(Source: 1999-2000 Chambers Legal Directory).