In-house lawyers gave a mixed reaction to government plans to permit them to offer their services directly to the public last week - with some delegates admitting that they failed to see the attraction of the idea.

The Lord Chancellor told delegates at the Law Society's Commerce & Industry Group's conference that the White Paper on legal services reform 'cannot be anything other than a huge opportunity for the in-house lawyer community'.


He said: 'When the Legal Services Bill becomes law, you'll be free, if your firm applies for the right licence, to provide all the services in which you are authorised, to all the diverse consumers of legal services... In-house lawyers will have the opportunity to demonstrate that they can contribute further to their employers' profits.'


He added: 'This could create new career opportunities, as legal services move from a support function to a core service the company provides. As the scope of legal service provision by businesses increases, so too do the services which you in those businesses can provide. That could mean more varied career paths for lawyers within a single organisation.


'Large businesses will be able to offer a range of graduate jobs, or even provide the final stage of training for new lawyers who can't, or don't want to, go down the traditional routes of a training contract or a pupillage.'


Owen Jonathan, general counsel at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said professional services firms would be interested in providing legal services. He added: 'We are looking at the proposals [for offering legal services] and there is certainly a demand from clients. Ironically, the limiting factor for us comes from the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation [in the US], which does not allow us to provide legal services to US audit clients.'


However, one in-house lawyer in the travel industry said he could not envisage competing with City law firms to provide legal services to the company's business clients. He added that he was 'struggling with the concept' of why his company would want to provide legal services to the public, which would be 'a completely new type of business, completely separate from the travel industry.'


Another in-house counsel in the property sector said: 'There are a lot of architects out there who are extremely unhappy with the service they get from law firms. We could offer a good service at the right rates. But if you move in-house, do you really want to go back to clients with whom you have an arm's- length relationship?'