'The Lord Chancellor's green paper on legal aid suggests extending legal aid funding to advice agencies, on the basis that they can deliver some legal services more cheaply than solicitors.

But here, perhaps, is an opportunity for solicitors to develop low-cost legal services by adapting to what clients want and can afford.

Alongside its traditional practice, one Bristol firm has been experimenting with a service of support to clients acting in person which it calls the 'law shop'.For clients who want or need to act in person the law shop can help in three ways:(a) clients may just buy a legal form, kit or book and take it away;(b) on paying an admission charge (currently £6 per visit), they can stay and use the law shop facilities, including: (i) 'over the shoulder' advice from the duty solicitor (currently the first ten minutes are free, then £6 per ten minutes of solicitor-time used); (ii) library, legal forms and kits, and stationery; (iii) office equipment -- copier, typewriter and wordprocessor; (iv) comfortable environment -- work stations and refreshments (extra cost);(c) clients have the reassurance that they can at any time switch out of the law shop and engage a conventional solicitor of their choice.Clients come from a wide social range and use the law shop for all kinds of simple contentious and non-contentious legal work.

Because of the 'self-help' emphasis, clients have to be prepared to take responsibility for progressing their work and to have an adequate level of literacy, depending on the complexity of the case.

The law shop's advertising and procedures on admission make it clear to clients that it should be used for simpler legal work only, that they should have their work checked by the duty solicitor, and that there are still risks.

What attracts clients is the low cost and the offer of professional support.

The law shop claims only a limited place in the range of legal services provision.

While it does address a large untapped market, it is limited by various factors, for example:-- the complexity of the work -- for example, the current policy is not to assist litigants in person in High Court litigation;-- the personal skills of the client;-- it does not provide representation;-- it is available only to people who visit in person, not to telephone callers;-- clients' money and files are not held;-- clients have professional indemnity cover only for the work the solicitor is asked to check;-- clients cannot 'dump' problems on the solicitor and walk away.However, the advantages of the law shop include:-- low-cost;-- client satisfaction and control;-- quality, professional service with in demnity cover;-- access to green form scheme for those eligible;-- face-to-face, local service in familiar, unintimidating, shop-type surroundings;-- in litigation: it reduces own costs risked; it increases the pressure on represented opponents risking their own costs; it can engage sympathy of court, where the opponent is represented; if eligible for green form, the advice and assistance spreads further before hitting cash limits; and less costs incurred means less clawback from winnings.Initial fears that the law shop's 'second rate' service might generate dissatisfied customers who would round on the profession when things went wrong have not materialised in practice.

There has not been a single complaint about the law shop in over four years of operation.

The limitations of the service are explained in the leaflet and orally to each user.

All users complete a 'session sheet' at each visit which draws attention to this.

They do accept that a 'self-drive' service is not as good as a 'chauffeur-driven' one and know, for example, that getting help with a will from the law shop is better than buying a will form at the stationers but not as good as engaging a solicitor to draw it up for them.Several issues have emerged since the law shop opened for business.

Clients can readily slip into the dependent role of wanting the solicitor to do all the work for them.

However, the law shop has developed procedures for resisting this pressure and keeping before clients at each stage the need to choose between self-help and being represented.

Solicitors can find it hard to stand back and allow the client to do the work: there is the frustration that 'I could have done it in a fraction of the time' and the instinct to want to re-write the client's 'plain English' in 'proper' legal terminology.

Various procedures and approaches have been developed at the law shop to deal with this.One of the built-in problems of any advice service is the cost of the time it takes to listen to the client's story at the outset.

Clients rarely come with only the relevant facts or with the facts arranged in any logical or chronological order.

The law shop has developed various ways of limiting this difficulty: for example, clients are asked to write down what they have come about before they see the solicitor and they are made aware that law shop charges are based on the time spent by the solicitor with the client.

A simple interactive computer interrogation to get more of the gist of the client's story, before seeing the solicitor, could also be developed.Pricing structure is critical.

Prices have to be kept so low that the clients can see a definite price advantage in using the law shop.

The prototype law shop keeps prices low by minimising staff and advertising costs and sharing overheads with the main practice.

As far as legal aid is concerned, it would be helpful to the development of the law shop if the green form tariff for payments could be extended to match more closely the kinds of support clients acting in person might want to purchase from the law shop.

For example, the purchase of a DIY small claims kit (£20) at the law shop could not be funded by the green form under present regulations.

Yet if this saved only half an hour of solicitor time it would have paid for itself.The law shop aims to be financially self-supporting, being financed by charges to clients with little or no external subsidy.

The prototype achieves this by sharing resources with the host firm.

But for the concept to develop to its full potential, with its own special cu lture and resources, law shops need to multiply.

The possibilities would then include:-- a national advertising and awareness campaign;-- a range of new publications directed at the untapped DIY legal market;-- the provision of videos (on specific court procedures, for instance);-- training sessions for lay advocates;-- seminars for interest groups on topics such as small claims, county court procedure, collecting business debts, income tax and VAT returns, mortgage repossession, enduring powers of attorney, law for small businesses, clubs and charities, petty magistrates' court offences, etc;-- easy-to-use computer software giving information, diagnosis, education and advice, and help with, for example, letter writing, form-filling, and preparing statements and briefs for DIY advocates.If a little legal aid money were invested in pump-priming the law shop approach everyone could benefit.

The needs of more clients would be met.

Government money would be saved, with law shop users by and large paying their own way.

And our profession, which is looking for work but has priced itself out of a socially vital section of the legal services market, would find some of its surplus capacity turned to good use and its public image considerably improved.