With the Monopolies and Mergers Commission's investigation of Scottish conveyancers and the continuing fall-out from alleged conveyancing price fixing in Lancashire, the Office of Fair Trading is suddenly back in the news.

But con veyancing is not the only area where the OFT might influence the working lives of lawyers.

The office also monitors entry to the profession and restrictions on multi-disciplinary practices.Lurking in the shadows is the Labour Party's commitment to refer all the legal profession's restrictive practices to the MMC, which it intends to merge with the OFT into a single body.John Bridgeman, who took over as OFT director-general in October last year, is not the only new face at the office.

There is a new director of consumer affairs, Geoff Horton, who also joined last year, and a new legal director, Pat Edwards.Miss Edwards, who has spent less than two months in her new post, is keen to avoid making sweeping statements about the OFT and her role as legal adviser to the director-general.

She explains that any comments about policy are the responsibility of the director-general.Miss Edwards began her legal career not with formal training as a solicitor or barrister but by working in the criminal appeal office at the Royal Courts of Justice.

A law graduate, she read for the Bar in her spare time, taking a correspondence course which culminated in sitting the Bar finals examination a few months after the full-time students.'I couldn't be called to the Bar for a further year because I hadn't eaten enough dinners,' she recalls.

'I didn't do a pupillage, which is probably pretty unusual for government lawyers.

By then, I was in a legal job with the criminal appeal office.

I liked it and I then became an established civil servant in the Government Legal Service.

Inevitably one took on heavier and heavier cases and also, after a while, the role of acting as registrar in court,' she continues.'At least in those days, one was expected to intervene fairly actively in the proceedings and was at liberty to stand up and mutter to their Lordships that they had got something wrong, or that a sentence they were proposing to substitute could not lawfully be substituted.'After nine years at the criminal appeal office Miss Edwards was seconded to the law officers department, now the legal secretariat to the law officers, a small group of lawyers who work for the Attorney-General and solicitor-general.'It was fascinating, a great contrast to the criminal appeals office.

It was more political.

Not in the sense that the law officers are acting in a "political" fashion, but as a transition from the world of the courts to mainstream Whitehall.'After three years with the law officers, Miss Edwards moved to the Home Office.

Much of her time was spent working closely on draft Bills with parliamentary counsel.

It also involved assisting ministers in Parliament during debates.'The parliamentary work is enormously invigorating,' Miss Edwards says.

'It acquires a momentum and there are tight deadlines.

You're creating something from scratch, and that is very enjoyable.'As in her current role, policy issues were for ministers, while the lawyers remained in the 'back room'.

However, Miss Edwards does not deny that lawyers can have some impact on policy through the advice they give.'It's too purist a line to suggest lawyers don't make a contribution to what policy might be,' she says.

'Take the case of an amendment tabled by an MP following the activities of a lobby group.

The lawyer wouldn't necessarily confine him or herself to saying it was "technically invalid", 'explains Miss Edwards.

'He would obviously go beyond that to a consideration of the amendment's more general legal effects.'Miss Edwards says much of her work at the Home Office was made up of criminal law, though this was the exception rather than the rule for other Home Office legal advisers.

She is reluctant to name any Bills which represented particular 'highlights' in her Home Office stint but she points to some non-criminal areas she has contributed to -- for example, the Broadcasting Bill, and the Immigration Act.Some 17 years at the Home Office were followed by a mere two as deputy parliamentary commissioner.

'One of the attractions was to do something totally different, with new challenges,' she enthuses.Although working with the parliamentary commissioner did not involve interviewing individuals, she enjoyed the sense of being in touch with 'real life and real people'.Miss Edwards is keen not to over-stress the link between deputy parliamentary commissioner and legal director at the OFT, but says 'a concern for individual members of the public' is a feature of both.At the OFT she heads a team of 12 lawyers -- some permanent staff, others on loan from government departments.

They are divided more or less evenly between consumer affairs and competition policy, and they come from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from the Consumers Association, City firms and the Bar.As OFT legal director Miss Edwards is involved with both the consumer affairs and the competition policy wings of the office.

Although she is reluctant publicly to address OFT policy matters, there are signs that she and the rest of the office could be turning a keen eye towards lawyers and the other professions.For example, the front page of a recent copy of the OFT's in-house journal, Fair Trading, trails an article under the heading 'Keeping a professional eye on the professions'.So far, much of what OFT director-general John Bridgeman has said in newspaper interviews has been about take-overs and mergers.

Could that be about to change?