THE STAGING OF THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN 2002 WILL SYMBOLISE MANCHESTER'S REBIRTH AFTER THE 1996 IRA BONB.If self-help gurus ever need an example of how to turn a negative into a positive, they should look no further than Manchester.Manchester has had things tough in recent years, but from the metaphorical ruins of the failed Olympic Games bid and the actual ruins of the 1996 IRA bomb, a vibrant city is rapidly emerging.Money that flowed from the Olympic bid helped fund the city's tram network while the recovery from the bomb is still ongoing, evidenced by building works all over the centre.

The Commonwealth Games in 2002 is fuelling this modernising rush further as Manchester aims to present an exciting face to the watching world.

If nothing else, it will present a rather red face, to judge by the extraordinary number of pubs, wine bars, and clubs that have sprouted in recent years.'It's the renaissance of Manchester,' enthuses Michael Shaw, managing partner of 48-partner firm Cobbetts.

'Given that nobody was seriously injured, the IRA did a significant favour to Manchester.

It says a lot about Mancunians that there was no gnashing of teeth and waiting for government handouts - they just got on with it.'In their own way, Manchester's law firms are similarly rising in stature.

For years the perception was, rightly or wrongly, that Leeds was the major legal centre of the north, overshadowing its neighbour.

Ironically though, it was the entrance of the Leeds firms into the Manchester market a few years back that sparked the surge.

Mr Shaw says there is 'no doubt' that the way his firm has grown in the past five years - doubling in size, turnover and profit - 'wouldn't have happened without the migration of the Leeds firms from a maturing home market'.Hammond Suddards was the first Leeds firm in with its own office, followed by a series of mergers which saw Manchester's so-called '3As' taken over.

Eversheds went for Alexander Tatham, Dibb Lupton Broomhead (as it then was) for Alsop Wilkinson and Booth & Co for Addleshaw Sons & Latham.These three merged firms are now widely seen as the top corporate practices in the city; a good example of this was HSBC Private Equity's recent £120 million sale of oil service company CRP Group to Barclays Private Equity, on which all three offices advised.

Their growth, the subsequent polarisation of the Manchester legal market and the city's increasing corporate activity now means that nobody feels inferior to those over the Pennines.

'The opportunities for new work are greater in Manchester than in Leeds,' says Addleshaws partner Richard Wheeldon.

'It's a far bigger city, which is why it's surprising that Leeds was in the lead.'Addleshaws is widely seen as the biggest player in Manchester.

With a head-count of 389, it acts for 43 plc clients in the area and nobody doubts that it has been a successful merger.

Cobbetts' Michael Shaw suggests that this growth - Addleshaws is rapidly building a London office with the aim of competing with second-tier City firms - offers opportunities for local firms such as his.

An Addleshaws needs £100 million deals rather than £10 million deals to support its cost base, he says, and smaller firms can target these less valuable matters.

It is a notion strongly repudiated at Addleshaws.

'We're not going to lose sight of where we come from,' insists corporate finance partner Michael McGrath.

'Working on £100 million plus deals brings back a level of skills to local deals which others don't have.'Addleshaws' highest-profile deal is acting for the organisers of the Commonwealth Games, as part of which it has reached a unique £1 million fees-for-sponsorship agreement.But while the work and profile is good, it does not necessarily send out the right message about Addleshaws' national ambitions, concedes Mr McGrath.

'The disadvantage of the games is that it looks like we only got the work because we're a Manchester firm.

In fact it's an international event and we've done broadcasting contracts around the world.'The assessment of which are the top firms is one Halliwell Landau would argue with.

Halliwells has recorded amazing growth in the past five years, its turnover of £26 million more than four times what it was in 1996.

But local rumour - and there are far more about 46-partner Halliwells than any other firm in Manchester - has it that this and fat profits for the top equity partners have been achieved at the expense of working assistant solicitors to the bone.

The firm's only business plan is said to run to three words: 'Make more money.'Managing partner Paul Thomas has heard it all before and puts many of the comments down to jealousy.

'Halliwell Landau is one of, if not the success story of Manchester.

Nobody's achieved what we have.

You can't develop a business like we have if the partners hog the equity and sweat the staff.' Contrary to rumour, the firm has a low staff turnover, he says, adding that assistants do not have individual billing targets, but collectively have team targets.

'If you want to make progress in the profession, you do have to work hard, but it's not a sweatshop.' He names his firm, Addleshaws and DLA as the top corporate firms, with Eversheds catching up fast.The bit about Halliwells not having a business plan is actually true, however.

'If we can be so successful without a business plan, then we're quite happy not having one,' says Mr Thomas.

'We do have an idea of where we want to get to but we won't go out and recruit just to meet a business plan.'Cobbetts is one of the Manchester's oldest firms and one of the few top practices with no offices outside the city.

Nonetheless, only 40% of its work comes from local clients.

'Because we're not doing one-off property deals in the local market all the time, our local profile is not as high.

We have a high recognition outside Manchester compared to our competitors,' Mr Shaw claims.Mr Shaw says a single office has its attractions to clients.

'Some significant clients do now put an emphasis on a single provider.

They don't want to instruct their lawyers in Manchester and find it resourced out of Birmingham and London.'Another single office practice is 58-partner Pannone & Partners, best known for the private client side of its business, such as acting in the Jodie and Mary conjoined twins case and the Alder Hey hospital scandal.

However, managing partner Joy Kingsley explains that half of the firm's £17 million turnover comes from commercial work.The perception that it is best for family and clinical negligence can be self-perpetuating, she admits.

'It's not always easy to convince large commercial clients.' But while Pannones numb ers Manchester Airport and Texaco among its big corporate clients, Ms Kingsley says it will never be an Addleshaws.

'You have to know you'll never be an Addleshaws; anyway, we don't want to be an Addleshaws.' Owner-managed businesses are more Pannones' thing.The salary frenzy in London has made its way up the M6 to an extent.

Newly qualifieds at the top firms can expect to earn at or close to £30,000, increases of more than 10% on last year.

It is motivated in the main by a shortage of quality lawyers, all agree.

Of course, £30,000 is how much new trainee solicitors at City firm Gouldens are now earning, but Ms Kingsley says you always feel that spending £1 in Manchester is the equivalent to £5 in London.The quality of life argument is easy to believe in Manchester, with the country's best football team, much of its best music and clubs, the forthcoming spotlight of the Commonwealth Games, and the countryside of Cheshire but a few minutes drive away.'The whole atmosphere is completely different from London.

The pace of life is different,' says Joy Kingsley.

'I was in a Pret a Manger in London the other week.

In Manchester, people stroll in and have a chat; in London, they were running in and out, mobiles ringing - and that was just East Croydon.'While acting for Manchester United is a dream, lawyers are involved in much more.

It may not be the biggest law firm in Manchester nor, in the main, do the most glamorous work - but James Chapman & Co has the sexiest client in the city.Acting for Manchester United is a marketing dream (more so than the local rival club, Manchester City, which has just taken on Eversheds) and makes a break from the defendant insurance work that accounts for the vast bulk of the firm's practice.

Indeed, by acting for United on the sponsorship deal with Vodafone and, probably, the recent kit deal with Nike (although the details are confidential), James Chapman has been involved in two of the biggest commercial deals Manchester has seen this year.But insurance is a mainstay of the second tier Manchester firms, with Chapmans, Berrymans Lace Mawer (BLM), Weightmans, Beachcroft Wansbroughs, Hill Dickinson, Davies Arnold Cooper and Keoghs (of nearby Bolton) all among those slugging it out along with top corporate practice DLA.The introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules last year upset the insurance law market, but Andrew Relton, managing partner of BLM's Manchester office, says that after an major initial dip, case levels have steadied at around 90% of what they were pre-Woolf.

While cases are concluding quicker, he adds, there is more activity on each file than before.BLM has been much in the news in recent months and is a good example of the kind of convulsions insurance law firms have undergone post-Woolf.

Most non-insurance lawyers have left the firm as it retreats into its core business - a group of commercial litigators, for example, left to help form a new firm in the city called Nexus.However, Mr Relton acknowledges that BLM is losing out with clients who want a one-stop service.

'We need a broader practice and are forging the relationships to do it, but it needs to be on a larger and broader basis than the Berrymans and Lace Mawer merger.

We're not looking to tag on a little commercial department to one of our offices.'What many predict as increasing merger activity by insurance law firms means that in a couple of years' time, there may be fewer than the 212 law firms currently in central Manchester.

All the national firms are there, along with a few City firms, such as Davies Arnold Cooper, Masons (for construction work) and Trowers & Hamlins.In addition, with firms such as London-based Leigh Day & Co, Donns, and Russell Jones & Walker, as well as Burton Copeland and Tuckers, Manchester boasts some of the leading claimant clinical negligence and criminal law names respectively in the country.

Altrincham, just outside Manchester, is home to Alexander Harris, another top claimant firm.The Manchester office of leading healthcare firm Hempsons had the dubious privilege this year of acting for serial killer Dr Harold Shipman.Beneath the half-dozen or so top corporate practices in Manchester, there is a large gap in size terms to the next group of firms, such as Betesh Fox & Co, Kuit Steinart Levy, Elliotts, Rowe & Cohen and Wacks Caller.

Chaffe Street is held out as a rare example of a highly regarded niche commercial firm.Araba Obodai is a commercial litigation partner at Betesh Fox and president of Manchester Law Society.

She says the city is 'doing very well, there's a real buzz'.

The legal community is equally buoyant, she adds.

'A lot of people who used to use London solicitors are coming to Manchester.' This is a theme taken up by pro.Manchester, a professional forum.

Earlier this year, then chairman Milton Pysden, a partner at Eversheds, launched a campaign to persuade those clients who still go to London to recognise what is under their noses.

'The professional community is the city's largest employer, with over 56,000 people, so there is no need to go to London for advice, particularly on deals,' he said.Ms Obodai speculates that with spiralling salaries in London being matched by spiralling billing targets, there might be a stream of disaffected solicitors looking to move to somewhere a little more manageable.

'We're all under a lot of pressure [in Manchester] and everyone is stressed, but we don't have bedrooms in the office.'The pride that Ms Obodai says many people increasingly have in Manchester will come to the fore in 2002 when it stages the Commonwealth Games.

Already some of the venues, such as the swimming centre and velodrome, are ready while a rash of building work testifies to efforts to smarten the city up and ensure it can cope with the influx of competitors and spectators.Rodger Pannone, senior partner of local firm Pannone & Partners and a former Law Society President, is chairman of the games.But while many want to get involved in the event in one way or another, says Fran Eccles, Manchester Law Society's administrator, few can afford the sponsorship deal that Addleshaw Booth & Co agreed with the games' organisers in lieu of £1 million of legal fees.So ProForum, a loose association of professional bodies in the city, has held talks with the organisers to discuss how best smaller firms can play their part, such as letting staff act as drivers or stewards or any number of other roles.

There is a meeting scheduled for next June to start organising this and also warn firms to plan ahead for coping with skeleton staff and unusual working arrangements during the games themselves.It is an event that Ms Eccles herself intends to throw herself into.

'I've volunteered to carry Linford Christie's lunchbox,' she smiles.