Some time during in the thrusting 1980s, the legal profession became a macho business.

Out went the genteel working practices of a more restrained era, and in came an aggressive and competitive ethos epitomised by late-night, head banging marathons.In US company-commercial firms, billable hours form the only measure of a lawyer's worth that matters, and in a recession-hit Britain it is not too difficult to envisage law firms here following the same road.

In this brave new world of competitive, aggressive lawyering, the young professionals are especially hard hit, as they are inculcated with a philosophy which places an inordinate amount of importance on putting in the time.In fact, the American Bar Association has been talking about 'lawyer burn out' for nearly a decade.

Now the British are gradually waking up to the possibility that there might be a problem.The Young Solicitors Group is organising a two-day conference this May which will attempt to air a series of issues falling under the umbrella term 'quality of life'.

YSG chairman, the consciously eccentric Andy Unger, readily admits that quantifiable research does not exist in the UK.'We are not claiming to have proved that there is a problem in this area,' says the South Bank University law lecturer.

'We have not got the resources to do the surveys to show that, so everything is anecdotal.

But, from our collective experience, the YSG thinks there is a problem and we are trying to start the debate.'That debate will take place over a weekend in Nottingham at a conference sponsored by the Gazette and jointly organised by the Association of Women Solicitors and the Group for Solicitors with Disabilities.

Although the conference will tackle areas as diverse as racial and sex discrimination within the profession and the implications of new technology, it will primarily focus on the ways in which solicitors work.'Do solicitors have to work five and a half days a week, 48 weeks a year, from nine in the morning or earlier through to six or seven or later in the evening?' asks Mr Unger.

And he reckons it is not just in the buccaneering City where the pressure is on to stay late into the night po ring over a file.'On the legal aid side, compared with 15 years ago, people are working much longer hours for roughly the same kind of income.

I see lots of friends who are exhausted by their work - people who can never leave their casework.

Older solicitors in both commercial and legal aid firms tell me that practice is just not fun anymore.

They do not feel as excited and rewarded as they used to be or as they expected to be.' Mr Unger is not speaking exclusively from an academic perspective - he spent four years at the beginning of his career in the law with an east London legal aid firm.Organisers of the Nottingham conference are planning a programme which will look at a range of options to traditional working practices, including part-time and home-working and long-term sabbaticals.

Mr Unger explains: 'We are interested in different models of practice, people who work differently who can tell us how they solve the practical problems.'The difficulty is that young solicitors do not want to be the first in their office to say "I do not want to work as much as this." We want to investigate whether people, if given the choice, would want to work, say, 80% of the time even if that meant getting only 75% of the salary.'Mr Unger acknowledges that, so far, his thoughts on quality of life have been heavily influenced by research done in North America.

Five years ago, the young lawyers section of the American Bar Association ran their own conference called 'At the breaking point'.

There, the group revealed research showing a clear decline in young lawyer job satisfaction levels.

ABA investigators also identified both physical and emotional problems suffered by lawyers which they attributed to ever increasing work loads.Emanating from that 1990 conference was the ABA publication Breaking Traditions: Work Alternatives for Lawyers.

It has subsequently become the unofficial text for Mr Unger's early steps into investigating the situation on this side of the Atlantic.'The report highlights the main problem - that there was no scope for valuing and rewarding lawyers beyond the arithmetic calculation of chargeable hours,' maintains Mr Unger.

'Such an equation does not take into account intangibles such as a person's general contribution to the work of a team.

In other words, you would not be able to tell the difference between someone who was a very good problem solver and somebody who simply puts in a lot of hours.'Mr Unger also points to research into alternative working practices at Canadian law firms.

Young lawyers in Canada did an economic analysis of two approaches to partner pregnancy.

They assessed the cost of providing full support to a female lawyer who had just had a child.

That involved keeping her in touch with the firm during maternity leave and then allowing her to work in a flexible way that was compatible with both the firm and her family when she returned.

That cost was then compared with the price of replacing the partner with a new lawyer.

Ultimately, the Canadian researchers claimed it was more economic to follow the first road.Indeed, Mr Unger is under no illusions about City partners taking a more humane approach to working practices without similar financial carrots.

'We will have to provide good economic answers for why they should change,' he says.

'But we will not find the answers unless we look for them.

At this stage we are trying to combat the absence of debate.'Come this May in Nottingham, the first steps will be taken towards a better understanding of the pressures of working in a British law firm.

Mr Unger is hoping to attract about 200 delegates and the YSG is aiming to keep the fee at about the £120 mark.

For more information, contact the group on 071-320 5793.