There has been a growing trend over the last few years for solicitors to move into all round private client services including investment and financial planning.

The Association of Solicitor Investment Managers (ASIM) was founded in 1993 and now has 51 member firms managing around £2 billion worth of funds for investors.Do solicitors offering investment management services use this to develop wider business? The experience of many members of ASIM including the firm where I work, Cripps Harries Hall, is that clients are looking to solicitors to perform an ever wider range of roles.

Many turn to them for services more typically associated with private banks.There are some barriers, not least that Bank of England and Law Society regulations prevent solicitors offering clients banking accounts.

But there is a solution to this; solicitors can arrange for clients to receive high quality banking services through link-ups.

At Cripps Harries Hall the partner is Citibank.Surveys suggest that what clients value above all is having access to a single contact within their principal advisers.

Clients expect this person to have wide commercial experience and to co-ordinate the firm's specialist services.Legal and tax structuring is the bedrock of the 'value added' work of most private client departments.

The long-term investment approach which clients seek fits well with a solicitor's natural approach which may be aiming to enhance clients' assets over generations rather than beat quarterly indices.A firm that can combine legal, tax and overall financial advice has two advantages for clients.

First it saves money.

If a firm has a central database of client information, it means the client does not need to run up bills taking each new specialist adviser through the (inevitably complicated) details of his or her affairs which are necessary before any substantive advice can be given.

This is becoming ever more important as in an increasingly litigious world advisers must ensure they know all relevant facts about a client before best advice can be given.Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, co-ordinated services from firms give clients more time to focus on their careers and more time to spend with their families.

Time spent on their own work, should give benefits that far outweigh solicitors' charges, given the earnings potential of most clients.Additional time with the family may be an even greater attraction for young parents now than it was for their own parents' generation, given changes in society.ASIM members who offer a private banking-style service, like the 'private office' service at Cripps Harries Hall, find that a significant number of new clients come from the old-established private banks.

Clients say they like to keep a banking account at the old, established banks, but that they have great difficulty in getting co-ordinated advice on the structuring of their affairs.

This is where solicitors can help them.This ability to offer a private banking-style service may also open up a new client base for firms with a more traditional clientele.

The 30 to 45 year old successful City corporate financier, headhunter or entrepreneur might not normally think of using a solicitor other than for purely legal services.

He or she might have an image of solicitors as not being commercially minded, and might not expect solicitors to offer breadth of advice.The experience at Cripps Harries Hall is that this kind of individual particularly appreciates the one-stop-shop service and the thinking behind it.As a concrete example, one client is a mid-40s partner of a professional firm (with a six-figure salary).

He came to the firm originally simply to execute wills.The firm now handles the family's investments, advises on his pension, gives tax planning advice (including the establishment of trusts), completes tax returns and handles the family's insurance needs.The husband can now handle the family's private business affairs in an hour a month rather than having them on his mind all the time.Most importantly he feels at last he has time to be a proper father.

Nor is this an isolated case.

For every ten new financial clients handled by our London office, on average eight will also use the firm for legal advice.

Other ASIM-member firms report similar figures.This move of solicitors to provide wider services will become particularly important as the barriers between professions break down.

The Labour government seems keen to encourage a multi-disciplinary approach and to discourage artificial barriers between professions.

Accountants are establishing subsidiary solicitors' practices which increases competition.ASIM members are finding that the disciplines necessary to co-ordinate legal and financial services to clients are also equipping them for the world they will face in the future.Are there any clouds on the horizon? The main concern for ASIM members is the regulatory environment that will apply under the new Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Solicitors' investment business has been regulated by the Law Society but will come under the FSA from 1999.ASIM is keen to avoid a situation where a separately incorporated subsidiary might be necessary for investment business, with the client having to sign separate client agreements with the legal practice and the investment subsidiary.

It would be a pity if when sophisticated clients are choosing to deal with one firm across a range of matters in a way that accords with the government's multi-disciplinary ideal, new financial regulation prevented this.Additional financial regulation may be necessary for many intermediaries but solicitors' firms are tightly regulated -- and well regulated -- by the Law Society already.While we are not complacent, the problems in the personal financial services industry do seem to have come from firms regulated elsewhere.Many ASIM firms are finding that the ability to offer all round financial, legal and tax advice is offering them a unique selling point that is particularly attractive to a new generation of wealth creators as well as to firms' traditional private-client base.

This can only be a positive point for firms as a whole.