The good Lord may have allocated Sunday a day of rest, but it does not always work that way.

For some solicitors, seizing the moment can mean getting a judge out of bed in the middle of the night or visiting their home at the weekend and asking for emergency steps to be taken.Emergency interim orders vary with each area of law, though the most commonly used are injunctions, Mareva injunctions (referred to as freezing orders post-Woolf), and search-and-seizure (or Anton Piller) orders.Anti-social hours are not the only peril of working in an area where emergency applications are an option.Disgraced peer Jeffrey Archer's barrister, Nicholas Purnell QC, got a telling-off from the trial judge over an emergency application to get Archer's former secretary Angela Peppiatt's credit card statements admitted in evidence, with Mr Justice Potts taking umbrage over the fact that another judge presided over the emergency hearing.If the intention was to ambush an unprepared Ms Peppiatt with the statements, it did not work.

In the end, the judge was so incensed that he gave her the rest of the day to take the documents home and consider them, and she returned with tales of Archer's various infidelities.Most lawyers would accept that applications often have a strategic purpose that can provide a tactical edge.

'Freezing orders can be used to force errant spouses to make early disclosure of their assets,' explains Harry Anderson, head of litigation and arbitration at City firm Herbert Smith.

'You normally have to wait months for disclosure, but this gives a means of having security where there is a worry they will get rid of some of the assets.'Obtaining an order can often prevent a situation spiralling out of control, Mr Anderson says: 'You might have a situation where you think: "That's not too bad, there is a £100,000 mortgage on a £500,000 property", but then you discover the husband has other borrowings against the property.

Many solicitors make the mistake of thinking you can just put a caution on the Land Register, but the husband can still go to the bank and continue borrowing against the property.'It is hardly surprising that the use of injunctions and other orders is increasing in som e areas.

Mr Anderson cites cases where asylum seekers are about to be put on a aeroplane before judicial review proceedings as an example of where they can be particularly valuable.'There has been an increase in judicial review work and a similar increase in applications for this kind of order,' he says.

'It happens a lot that at the hearing when you apply for leave, you also ask for other types of emergency relief.

This means that you can take action before the bird has flown, so to speak.'However, seeking such orders does have a downside, which has led to a reluctance from both solicitors and their clients to pursue them.

They can often cause animosity between parties, which is particularly damaging in family cases.'It creates bad humour, and sometimes the result is that negotiations are no longer possible,' says James Copson, a partner specialising in family law at City firm Withers.One of the most common examples is an application for a freezing order where a husband has transferred funds to a business partner through a long-existing arrangement.

The husband is rarely happy when a spanner is thrown in the works by way of a freezing order.'It depends on the individual customer, but some can get intensely irate.

Sometimes it will all just result in more acrimony, with the party refusing to give disclosure under the court rules, and you end up entering into a litigation scene.

The legal costs increase and someone can end up really losing out in the end.'Mr Copson says it is important to take a long-term view in these situations.

'It is the solicitor's job to make sure that the person on the receiving end takes as pragmatic a view as possible under the circumstances,' he says.

'You have to explain to them the downsides of treating an application for an injunction as a declaration of war.'This is not the only downside.

Interim orders are expensive, and often the initial order sought can give way to a myriad of further applications.

These can sometimes be spread out all over the world, says Jeremy Cole, a partner specialising in international fraud at City firm Lovells.'I can sit on my chair in this office, but everything I touch has an international implication,' he explains.

'Freezing assets here will involve heading off to other countries to follow the trail.

I worked on a case recently where high-yield bonds were sold to German investors.

The defendant was based in London, so we got the court orders in England.'We had to drill the locks [of the office doors] and when we found the documents, we discovered that funds had been transferred to New York, where I was at the time.

So we had to get freezing orders there, and then discovered there were other funds in the Bahamas, so had to get freezing orders over there as well.'The trail continued on to Holland and Costa Rica, meaning more time and expense, he adds.Part of the reason is down to parties transferring funds over to countries with favourable tax conditions.

'If what you're trying to freeze is in an EU member country, it is easier to re-enforce because there are various treaties in place.

But most of the time the money will be in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands or somewhere in the West Indies,' says Mr Anderson.Additional costs come from other factors, says Tom Lidstrom, litigation partner at Linklaters and a member of the firm's injunction taskforce.

One factor has been the impact of rules brought in by the Woolf reforms.'The courts have imposed a number of safeguards, which are sensible, but they do add significant ly to the cost and put them out of reach for many people,' he says.

'There is the need for a proper balance between respecting the defendant's rights and making sure these remedies are not the preserve of the huge, well-resourced litigant.'The Woolf reforms have also added to the risk element.Pre-Woolf, one of the hazards of applying for emergency orders was that everything affecting the claimant's case -- positively or negatively -- had to be revealed to the judge.'There was -- and still is -- an obligation to give full and frank disclosure,' Mr Cole says.

'You have to reveal the good and bad about everything concerning the case, and you can't mislead the court.'This has now been taken one step further.

'There is a requirement now that, where applicants apply for injunctions and are unsuccessful, they must disclose to the other side that they made an application and the evidence they used,' Mr Lidstrom explains.

'The other side is tipped off, so people are being much more careful about applying for orders.'Even when an order is successfully obtained, this does not guarantee that it was worth going after in the first place.

'There is a growing feeling among practitioners that courts are not serious about breaches, especially of contempt orders,' explains Mr Lidstrom.He recently acted in a case where he obtained a freezing order for a client, but the other party failed to disclose accounts abroad and got a suspended sentence.

Mr Lidstrom says the penalties for breaching orders have created a lottery, with solicitors having to warn their clients that the only punishment might be 'stern words'.'It is about the openness of justice and protecting the defendants' rights,' he says.

'These are commendable objectives and I support them, but when you consider the cost, the additional risk for the claimant, and the perception that defendants' rights are not matched by the penalties if they breach the order, people don't want to take the risk.'Mr Anderson agrees.

'There is no question that judges are too lenient,' he says.

'Breaching an order is a serious matter, and this is how they should be viewing it.'Mr Lidstrom hopes that when the Woolf reforms settle down further, solicitors will be braver when advising their clients to take the plunge when it comes to emergency applications.

For practitioners and clients for whom -- as always -- time is of the essence, it is a situation which cannot arise too soon.