Gerald Shamash is a happy man.

As the lawyer who acts for the Labour Party on most of its external legal issues - as well as for a number of its MPs on a personal basis - he says he has a near perfect job.'I thoroughly enjoy it - it's very satisfying work to be doing.

It marries my love of politics with my love of the law.

I do such a wide variety of work - it's wonderful.

The Labour Party is very, very big so I come across people from all over the country and from all walks of life,' he says.Such a wide clientele often leads to conflicting demands on his time.

He explains: 'Oh yes, there is conflict - I could get calls from all over the country at any given time.

I have hundreds of these things.

The range of people that I act for is just enormous and at a very high level.'Most of my work is for the executive committee, which is inevitable because everything has to go through them.'Mr Shamash, who is a named partner at Steel & Shamash, based in Waterloo, London, began working for the party on a formal basis in 1992.

His background as a parliamentary candidate in the 1979 general election, and a Labour councillor for eight years in Barnet, north London, helped him win the bulk of the party's work when he offered his services.He continued: 'I have always been interested in this form of work and I thought pre-1992 that I would like to offer my help.

As with all things, you can't offer expert advice unless you do the cases.

Labour recognised that I did quite a lot of this type of work because of my connections as a member of the party, and the firm's co-founder Elaine Steel (now a literary agent) was also a party member, so I started doing more and more and have been doing it ever since.'Mr Shamash says all of his clients, bar one, are either politicians or are involved in the political system.

'I only act for Labour politicians.

It would be impossible to work for anyone else, although I sometimes do work for returning officers.'When Labour politicians have a problem - be it criminal, civil or scandal - Mr Shamash is often the man they come to, whether they are cabinet ministers or parish councillors.

A high-profile criminal case in which Mr Shamash was involved on behalf of a politician was the Fiona Jones case in 1999.Ms Jones, a Labour MP, and her agent Des Whicher were found guilty by Nottingham Crown Court of knowingly making a false declaration about election expenses under the Representation of the People Act 1983.The conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal, but when Ms Jones tried to retake her seat in the Commons, the Speaker told her that the seat was forfeit because she had originally been convicted.'As a result of that, the speaker, through the Attorney-General, applied to the Divisional Court for a declaration as to what the law was.

The court construed the Act to mean that she was entitled to take her seat,' he says.Other cases involved a local authority chief executive who banned the leader of the Labour group from the town hall, a mayor who had to stand down for failing to declare a pecuniary interest, and an election petition by a councillor who stood as an anti-parish council candidate in a bid to try and prevent a new parish council being formed.Dealing with Labour officials of all levels, Mr Shamash does most of the work himself, aided by his soon-to-be-qualified trainee - Louise Pieros - who as parliamentary assistant to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, herself has impeccable Labour Party credentials.Despite his strong political links, Mr Shamash says he is not required to be political in his role, though he does occasionally serve as a spokesman for the Labour Party.'It helps coming from a political background because I know what worries politicians and can empathise with them.

But it's not for me to be political.

If I wanted to be, I should be in the Commons.'Mr Shamash has now served under three Labour leaders - Neil Kinnock, and barristers Tony Blair and the late John Smith.

Surprisingly, he says there is little difference in his work under these supremos.

However, the election season brings about a greater volume of work, he says.He admits that his chosen field is a niche market.

'It is an unusual area of law.

It is inevitable that the lawyers for the main parties know and interact with each other.

We have high mutual respect for each other, because we know what we are doing.'I have had cases where other lawyers have got involved, and they often come a bit unstuck because they don't know what they are doing.

They miss deadlines and so on, and the reason is that the new civil procedure rules have pretty much completely excluded election law.

They touch on it, but an election petition, for example, pretty much trundles on in its own way.'His workload, he explains, can cover criminal and libel matters, general election law, local government, parliamentary regulatory issues, and election petitions, if candidates claim the count was wrongly conducted.He says police are aware that troublemakers may report politicians for technical breaches of the Political Parties Elections and Referendum Act 2000 - such as using the wrong room for political activities, or breaking the rules on election expenses because something is entered in the wrong place on a form.

'The Act is really open to abuse and I hope this kind of thing isn't something that is going to grow,' he adds.He is also preoccupied with a raft of recent legislation affecting both central and local government, and frequent local by-elections.

Therefore, he says, is busy all year.'The face of local government is changing with the introduction of the Local Government Act 2000.

It introduces a new framework and the equivalent to a declaration of members' interests for councillors.

This is an area where we are going to see considerable revolution.'But for the moment the future is on hold for Mr Shamash as he steels himself for the immediate battle ahead.Andrew Sharp, responsible for overseeing legal and constitutional affairs from the party's Millbank headquarters, says the election brings no change: 'I have worked under five leaders since being employed by the party.

But over that time the party has got more professional .

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We are now a very different organisation from the one I joined in the seventies.'Mr Sharp - who, though not a qualified lawyer, acts as the party's legal liaison officer - says his role is 'making sure that the party campaigns within the law and that all its representatives are aware of the legal implications of any actions they take'.Not all the problems confronting the party are predictable, as Mr Sharp explains: 'In a parliamentary by-election, I had to deal with a situation where one of our party workers was putting a poster stake in a voter's garden and managed to sever the gas supply pipe.

I had to tell him that it was not advisable to smoke on duty.'Meanwhile, the Society of Labour Lawyers has enjoyed a renaissance since the victory of New Labour in 1997, according to the group's secretary, Fraser Whitehead, head of the Law Society's civil litigation committee and partner at national firm Russell Jones & Walker.Membership of the society - which describes itself as 'an organisation reflecting the thinking of the Labour Party on legal issues'- is made up of around 600 solicitors, barristers, academics, and magistrates, and includes the likes of Jack Straw.The society is arranged through an executive committee that is partly elected by the membership.

Geoffrey Bindman, the eminent civil liberties lawyer and senior partner of London firm Bindman & Partners, is chairman of the society.The society is divided into groups covering different sectors: housing, access to justice, human rights, immigration, media, crime, health and safety, corporate and financial.The society has privileged access to ministers and the sector groups have regular meetings, often attended by front-bench spokesmen, while the society's executive committee meets with cabinet ministers two or three times a year.Mr Whitehead explains that the society does not always toe the government line.

Recent examples of policy differences include attempts to reform trial by jury (opposed by the society), and the society's preference for a separate ministry of justice.But the way things are looking, the government may be coming round to its way of thinking - which could be rather bad news for one of the leading Labour lawyers, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine.