MATT BARNARD TALKS TO COMMERCIAL LAWYERS IN CARDIFF AND FINDS THEM ANTICIPATING CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND PLANNING LAWFor lawyers in the biggest commercial firms in Cardiff, the morning of 12 May -- when the Labour-led Welsh Assembly first gathered -- brought little dramatic change.

This was not a major surprise as no-one expected a 'big-bang', although the ramifications of a repeal in Wales of the beef on the bone ban would be a first crucial test of both the assembly's commitment to a new consensual politics and Westminster's commitment to allow Wales freedom to govern itself.The Welsh capital and seat of the assembly is home to the four largest firms in Wales -- Eversheds, Morgan Cole, Edwards Geldard and Hugh James Ford Simey -- and so far the devolution process has had little impact on their work.

If a company goes to a Welsh firm to ask whether there are any new rules which are going to affect its business in Wales, 'the answer is going to be fairly quick and easy' according to Michael Jones, a partner at Hugh James Ford Simey.

'But,' he adds, 'watch this space.

One doesn't know where this baby's going.'The Welsh 'baby', unlike its Scottish sibling, supposedly has limited and specific powers.

The thinking behind the difference between the Scottish and Welsh devolution arrangements is that Scotland has its own legal system and therefore the Scottish Parliament required primary law-making powers to modernise its legal system; the Welsh, enjoying a virtually identical legal system to England, only needed a body capable of amending secondary legislation.This was not the view of Ron Davis, on the evidence of a recent article he wrote for the Institute for Welsh Affairs -- the primary think-tank on a Welsh perspective.

In it he apparently indicated that it was Tony Blair who wanted to restrict the assembly's powers to amending secondary legislation.

Mr Davis saw it as a first step to a full parliament.What the Welsh got was an assembly which can amend secondary legislation in 18 specific areas mostly concerned with public sector matters, ranging from agriculture and ancient monuments to water and flood defence.

Of those areas, economic development, the environment, industry and planning are the ones which will affect businesses the most and therefore the commercial law firms which service them.As Roger Thomas, senior partner in Eversheds's Cardiff office, says: 'The question to ask of anybody who tries to hype it too much is "In the past how much have you dealt with the Welsh Office and how much have you been looking at statutory instruments that have been made by the Welsh Office?" If you haven't been looking at those, you're not going to be doing anything different.'For those firms which deal with public policy matters, the change will be incremental as the assembly begins to amend existing secondary legislation as well as new secondary legislation emanating from London.

It is not clear how quickly that process will happen, but Hugh James Ford Simey's Mr Jones points out: 'If you give 60 politicians the right to do things, I take it as inevitable that they will do them'.Not only are 60 people making decisions where previously there were three -- the Secretary of State and his two ministers -- but in practice much of the legislation passed up to now would simply be rubber-stamped as being operative in Wales.

This will no longer be the case as the 60-strong assembly represents a variety of interested parties keen that their own particular perspectives be taken into account.There is likely to be an increasing amount of work in the public law sector, including judicial review about which the Welsh office is thought to be particularly concerned.

Another extremely significant factor is that the Welsh and Scottish devolution Acts both incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights, which is sched uled to be introduced into England within two years.

However, effectively Welsh and Scottish public bodies will have to deal with it from day one.For the commercial firms, the assembly will almost certainly mean that they will develop more substantial public law departments.

In a relatively small legal market that competes with firms outside Wales as much as those inside its borders, the opportunity the assembly offers is a specialism that will differentiate them from their competitors to the east.Furthermore, the assembly's decisions will become increasingly important as its tentacles stretch ever farther.

'It's whatever you can bring into the definition of a devolution issue,' warns Carolyn Kirby, a member the Law Society's Welsh working party.

'It obviously typically starts with statutory bodies but works outwards, and people are going to become more and more imaginative as they get to grips with this.'The fact that the assembly exists will also have other knock-on effects, and in fact it already has.

John Thomas, one of the Wales and Chester circuit's two presiding judges, used the assembly as one argument in favour of the creation of the circuit's own mercantile court.

He pointed out that it was incongruous to have English centres with their own mercantile courts, and Wales, with its own parliamentary body, languishing without one.

It was an argument that the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Tom Bingham, could not resist.Another effect is that the assembly could choose either significantly to increase or decrease the attraction of Wales as an industrial and business centre.

Robin Ap Cynan, chairman of the Law Society's Welsh working party, explains: 'The assembly may decide to have looser environmental protection regulations than in England to attract dirty business.

It may be seen that there needs to be a more business friendly regime in order to attract investment because clearly it is on the Celtic fringe which is farther away from Brussels and the rest of Europe'.For now, it is business as usual.

In five years time there are likely to be bigger firms with larger public law departments fighting off the other national law firms wanting to get a sniff of the action.

As always, more law is good for lawyers.

The Welsh Assembly will be no exception.SOLICITORS ON THE WELSH HIGH STREETS HOPE FOR A BETTER DEAL BUT FEAR CONFUSION AND CHAOS, WRITES DAN BINDMANThe likely impact of devolution on high street solicitors is still a matter of keen speculation.

Practitioners' views include hopeful enthusiasm for opportunities that the government of Wales Act 1998 might deliver to Welsh law firms.

At the other extreme, there is a nervousness that differences in the application of parliamentary statutes in Wales and England could lead to confusion and chaos.Privately, many solicitors in Wales are sceptical that the assembly will prove to be much more than an extra bureaucratic tier of local government, although they acknowledge its symbolic and political significance.

Law Society Council member Geoffrey Sandercock, whose constituency includes Gwent, says: 'My personal view is that I see no useful purpose in the Welsh Assembly legislating in different terms at a secondary level to legislation that would be passed in England, because there is, with the single exception of language, no difference'.Even among its supporters, there is widespread cynicism that the assembly's 60 members will feel compelled to 'make their mark' by creating unnecessary legislation.

Gwyn Bartley, a partner at nine-partner Holywell, Flintshire-bas ed Clement Jones, who recently addressed assembly members on behalf of the North Wales Confederation of British Industry, says: 'They're all being paid £35,000 a year plus expenses and they're going to find themselves wanting to do something.

I've said they should do just two things.

One, to improve communications and transport between north and south Wales, and two, to do absolutely nothing until they sit back and think how this will affect the local economy'.One urgent concern raised by solicitors is that no provision has yet been made to publish the assembly's statutory instruments (SIs) in the form of a digest aimed at lawyers, although the proceedings of the assembly will be published on the Internet.

According to the Law Society Council member for the Welsh Marches, Robin Ap Cynan, no legal publisher has committed to publishing the SIs.

He says the only suggestion for a legal digest has come from Cardiff University but this could cost solicitors £2,000 a year to buy.

'High street firms have enough to deal with, what with the legal aid reforms and the Solicitors Indemnity Fund and so on.

They want to spend £2,000 a year like they want a hole in the head,' Mr Ap Cynan says.Mr Ap Cynan also argues that because all assembly SIs will be issued in both English and Welsh, there could be differences in nuance between the two texts, possibly giving rise to later negligence actions if a solicitor failed to consider both interpretations.

He estimates that only about one-fifth of the practising solicitors in Wales -- who total 2,000 to 2,400 -- speak any Welsh at all.

Others are less concerned.

Mr Bartley, who is fluent in Welsh, says language differences 'will not loom large'.

The number of occasions where the text will materially differ 'will be minuscule', he adds.

Ann Garrard, the Law Society's regional secretary for Wales, is also doubtful that language differences will present a serious problem.The most important effect of devolution on the average high street practice is likely to derive from some of the powers of the assembly set out in schedule 2 of the Government of Wales Act 1998.

Among the 18 areas of law for which responsibility for secondary legislation will fall within the remit of the assembly are the environment, health and health services, local government, social services and town and country planning.

But the assembly has no power to implement statutes relating to social security, home and foreign affairs, the Exchequer, or any matter within the jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor's Department.

This means that responsibility for legal aid, criminal law, company and commercial law, land law, employment law and taxation law will remain with Westminster.Ms Garrard, who has been running a series of Law Society seminars on Welsh devolution since last year's referendum, highlights planning and environment matters -- which will transfer from the Welsh Office to a panel of assembly members -- as being likely to have the greatest significance for smaller practitioners: 'The legislation is so skeletal normally.

It's all driven by guidelines, secondary legislation, statutory instrument.

I think environmental and planning law is going to affect the high street more than anything on a day-to-day basis because that's something that comes up even in conveyancing, potentially'.Family practitioners also anticipate the assembly will influence their practices.

Law Society family law committee member Sally Dowding, of three-partner Bangor firm Elwyn Jones & Co, foresees possible problems where different rules apply on each side of the border.

'We could have a situation, for example, where under the Children Act you have one set of regulations this side of Offa's Dyke and another set on the other side.

It's not unusual to have cases which involve one parent in England and another parent in Wales.

This could cause endless confusion, compounded by the fact that it is still unclear how these SIs are going to be published.'Some Welsh solicitors are optimistic that devolution and the consequent development of a parallel body of law will give them a unique role in cross-border transactions -- to the advantage of many high street practitioners.

'We look at it as being extremely beneficial,' says Peter Richards, Mr Bartley's senior partner at Clement Jones, which has six high street offices across Wales.Mr Bartley is even more enthusiastic.

'I see an enormous opportunity for us to sell the expertise that we can develop in the changing Welsh law to practices in England and beyond.

Because very few English practices are going to have the resources to keep an eye on the Welsh legislation, and no-one can do a deal or buy property or enter into employment contracts, for example, in Wales without considering the impact of any Welsh subsidiary legislation.

I see that as something we can market as high street practitioners.'Mr Ap Cynan takes a different approach to essentially the same analysis.

English practitioners, he says, should be educated in the Welsh legal system so as to avoid the profession in Wales become 'ghettoised' and to prevent barriers to the freedom of movement into Wales by practitioners from outside.

In January, he wrote: 'Only by taking steps within the field of legal education, and by emphasising the fact that all solicitors need to get to grips with how to deal with the output of the assembly, will this be able to be prevented.

We are at present a united profession in England and Wales, we need to remain so.'NICHOLAS MURRAY FINDS THAT LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAWYERS ARE ANTICIPATING INCREASED WORKLOADS BECAUSE OF THE ASSEMBLYIn practice the National Assembly, while operating in a legal context set by the Westminster Parliament, is going to have responsibility for a considerable amount of secondary legislation.

Local government lawyers in particular are looking at the future in a mood of cautious expectancy.

'With much local government legislation,' explains Cardiff Council's Director of Legal and Administrative Services, Dianne Bevan, 'the devil is in the detail.

There is the potential to have a significantly different body of law in Wales'.From one point of view, the National Assembly is simply accelerating an existing process whereby more and more new legislation leaves the detail to be worked out in subordinate legislation -- through statutory instruments, for example.

But the National Assembly will begin a process whereby the law of England and Wales will begin to diverge in many particulars.

The two systems, according to some observers, may in addition begin to run at different speeds.The Gazette contacted more than a quarter of Welsh local authority legal departments to discover that, while the replacement of the Welsh Office by the National Assembly is far from inducing panic, there is apprehension about increased workloads at a time when most council budgets are being squeezed.

The overall view, however, was one of cautious expectation: no-one quite knows what the future will be.

'It's very difficult to judge,' says Merthyr Tydfil Borough solicitor Barbara James, 'we are watching the National Assembly Web site with interest!'.Local go vernment in Wales has been through a recent upheaval with a brand new system of unitary councils only four years old, and local government lawyers are well used to coping with constant and radical change.

'Whatever happens we will deal with it,' says Ms James.The founding mantras of the National Assembly were 'inclusiveness' and 'partnership', words which have been quoted remorselessly in Wales during the past two or three years.

Formal arrangements have been set up in the shape of a Partnership Council which will guarantee that local government is consulted.

Local authority solicitors will be called on to comment on emerging subordinate legislation at every stage.

The replacement of one person, the Secretary of State for Wales, by a lively and disputatious body of 60 elected members with no overall party control, is scarcely going to lead to less scrutiny of legislation, especially in contentious areas such as planning appeals.According to Ann Garrard, regional secretary of the Law Society in Wales, there can be up to 800 statutory instruments a year, as even now many Acts take it for granted that they will be followed by masses of subordinate legislation.

Where these might once have been rubber-stamped by the Secretary of State, there will now be a legal scrutiny committee of the National Assembly working on each item of secondary legislation.The committee is almost certain to contain some of the prominent Welsh lawyers elected to the assembly such as solicitor Ieuan Wyn Jones (Anglesey), barrister Carwyn Jones (Bridgend), solicitor John Griffiths (Newport East) and law professor Nick Bourne (mid and west Wales).

The result will be close scrutiny of every piece of legislation and widespread public consultation.

The inevitable result, according to former head of legal services at the Welsh Office David Lambert, now a fellow at Cardiff University Law School, is that legislation will take longer to form.

He has devised what he calls 'the Lambert Flow-Chart' which shows all the stages a piece of secondary legislation will have to pass through.

He estimates that where once a statutory instrument might have passed through five stages, it will in future be required to jump through a staggering 92 hoops, including checks on human rights safeguards and agreement in two languages.

'It could take a year to work through a piece of legislation,' he says.

'That's quite remarkable.' He adds: 'There will be a lot more work for local government lawyers'.That is certainly the view of David Daycock, solicitor to the City and County of Swansea.

'We're expecting a special corpus of Welsh law to emerge,' he says, adding that although local government welcomes the challenge of partnership with the National Assembly, it will mean that legal departments in local councils will need to reorganise the way they work.

'We as lawyers in Wales will have to have the expertise,' he says.

Swansea plans to dedicate staff to dealing with legislative scrutiny of what is coming out of the National Assembly, developing training in-house, but it does not rule out the possibility that extra staff might be needed in the future.Mr Daycock predicts that the Human Rights Act will be introduced in Wales well in advance of England and that Welsh councils could have to deal with many more legal challenges as a result.

The simultaneous drafting of legislation in Welsh and English -- another new feature of the National Assembly going well beyond current bilingual policies of translating after the event -- will add to the complexity.

'For a local government lawyer in Wales it's a very difficult time but I hope we'll rise to the challenge,' says Mr Daycock.Dilys Phillips, legal services manager at Gwynedd Council, thinks the impact on local government lawyers will depend on the extent to which functions currently exercised by the Secretary of State are delegated down to officers and committees of the National Assembly.

On matters such as planning guidance, or the calling-in of planning applications where the Secretary of State's decisions are to be replaced by wider debate, there is potential for an increased workload for council lawyers.Ms Phillips predicts 'more subtle differences in powers of intervention' rather than a revolution but, like her colleagues elsewhere in Wales, she concludes: 'We are waiting to see how it will work in practice'.

The head of corporate and legal services at Blaenau-Gwent Keith Jones, also expects 'a change of style and direction' rather than a seismic upheaval, although he thinks the National Assembly will be keen to 'impress a Welsh stamp on subordinate legislation'.Roger Eagle, chief legal officer at Powys Council, is hoping for 'shorter lines of communication, a good dialogue' from the National Assembly and hopes that local government will be able to increase its impact on legislation because of the promise of wider consultation and partnership.Ms Bevan at Cardiff, who is also chairwoman of the South and Mid Wales Local Government Group, says that one result of the promised local government/National Assembly partnership will be: 'We will get involved a lot more in early consultations about secondary legislation'.

In areas like environmental protection (in particular beef on the bone which is shaping up to be one of the National's Assembly's first issues of contention and difference from England), performance indicators and inspections systems in social services, long-standing contentious planning issues like second homes, wind farms, political debate at assembly level will be greater and the impact on local government correspondingly greater.

'Local government lawyers will have to keep up with the procedures, the grounds of challenge,' warns Ms Bevan.A hung National Assembly will lead to more political debate and the likelihood that local government lawyers will increasingly be drawn into advising their councils on a range of contentious issues.

But they seem well aware of the challenge and ready to embrace it.