Many in-house lawyers derive much of their job satisfaction from taking a full role in the management of their companies.

Solicitor Michelle Davies is head of legal and company secretary at Nirex, a company which was set up in 1982 to carry out government policy on the disposing of the radioactive waste created by the UK's nuclear industry.

Ms Davies took the non-legal elements of her job to a new dimension when she instigated and drafted a transparency policy for her company.

This policy requires that all information should be given to the public on request if there are no substantial and compelling reasons for not doing so.'It's not enough any more to be able to put all the ticks in the legal boxes -- "here's your authorisation and here's your licence to operate" -- because you can get a gap between what's legal and what's legitimate in the sense that the public is prepared to accept it,' says Ms Davies.

'I was the main person in my organisation saying that we had to go for transparency.

It's curious because I'm a lawyer, and to many lawyers transparency is anathema because you end up providing ammunition to the opposition, and it's hard doing your job knowing that at any time anything you've done might end up in the street.

There are days when I say to myself: "I am a lawyer, am I not?" You train all those years to be a solicitor and then you look up one day and think: "I'm not now, I'm a director of this company".'Ms Davies's intriguing role is owed in part to the fact that Nirex is a small, 68-employee company with a high and controversial public profile.

In 1997, a public enquiry rejected Nirex's plans to create a site for waste disposal at Sellafield in Cumbria.'The outcome of the enquiry could be put down to the fact that Nirex was mistrusted and regarded as very secretive,' says Ms Davies.

Her transparency policy, which is modelled on the new Freedom of Information Bill, aims to change this.Ms Davies's legal background has equipped her well to steer a company whose position is so politically sensitive.

She began her career in the private sector with Cardiff law firm Edwards Geldard, but became bored with the commercial property law she was practising.

Her interests lay in administrative law -- at one point she planned to write a PhD in judicial review -- so she joined the treasury team in the Government Legal Service.

Here she encountered controversy head-on in the Cleveland child abuse enquiry and had her first brush with freedom of information in the injunction against Spycatcher.When Ms Davies returned to private practice with Edwards Geldard she was instructed by the Ca rdiff Bay Development Corporation and began to develop an interest in environmental law.

She recalls: 'It was in 1989, when the first environment Bill was going through, and most private practice firms saw environmental law as the new niche practice area for the '90s.

For the first time, environmental warranties and liabilities were becoming deal-breakers in company takeovers and mergers.

Edwards Geldard asked me to set up its environmental law department'.It was while she was working as an environmental law specialist -- work which included developing the first eco-label certifying that a product was environmentally friendly in the European Community -- that Ms Davies came to the attention of Nirex and was headhunted by the company.

She joined Nirex in 1994, when the company was about to be the subject of a key public enquiry into its planning application for the radioactive waste disposal site in Sellafield.'After I arrived at Nirex, the legal director and his assistant disappeared with half of [City firm] Freshfields and a load of counsel to prepare for the enquiry, so I was on my own in the office,' she recalls.

'I spent most of that period developing a policy for the company which made us able to monitor developments in EC law which might have implications for us.

I spent a lot of time in Brussels making representations for changes to draft legislation which would make it harder for Nirex to develop a nuclear waste repository.'Ms Davies's experience of lobbying bodies such as the Department of Trade and Industry, the Welsh Office and the Confederation of British Industry on behalf of clients when she was in private practice had prepared her for lobbying in Brussels, as had the contacts she had developed during her stint as a civil servant.At the time Ms Davies was not involved in the work on Nirex's planning application.

But when, during the public enquiry, Friends of the Earth lodged complaints with the Environment Commissioner alleging that Nirex's planning application was flawed, Nirex asked Ms Davies to make the necessary representations in Brussels because she was already in the city.

She successfully persuaded the commissioner to close the files.However, in the UK the outcome of the enquiry went against Nirex in 1997.

'At that time UK nuclear waste policy came up against a brick wall,' is how Ms Davies puts it.

Nirex closed down its Cumbria base and more than half its staff were made redundant.

Among the casualties were Ms Davies's boss, the legal director who had been in charge of the enquiry, and another lawyer who held the post of company secretary.

Ms Davies picked up both their jobs, being appointed head of legal in April 1998 and company secretary when the two posts were merged in January this year.She was for some time the only lawyer in the company, but has recently recruited an assistant, John Kelly, to handle routine work such as insurance, property leases and advice to the trustees of the company's pension fund.

Ms Davies says: 'In an ordinary day here you can spend the morning advising the security man who looks after our property in Cumbria and wants to stop people hunting hares with dogs on our land, and the afternoon doing conveyancing'.Mr Kelly qualified in September last year after doing his training with Bristol firm Burges Salmon.

However, his working life to date has been more colourful than that of the average newly-qualified solicitor.

He left school at the age of 16 and became an apprentice electrician with British Rail.

After five years, he did an electronics degree at Manchester Univ ersity and subsequently worked for BBC Television as a studio engineer, moving on to lecture for Auntie on the subjects of cameras and studio technology.

When the BBC's director general, John Birt, decided to bring in the internal market regime Mr Kelly opted to leave.

He followed up legal night classes which he had been attending with a common professional examination at Birmingham and a legal practice course at Bristol.Speaking of his decision to move in-house so soon after qualifying, Mr Kelly says: 'Private practice feels a bit strange if you've been in industry all your life.

In-house there's much more of a team ethic.

Private practice is just a lot of people doing their own thing and guarding their clients jealously'.Ms Davies echoes these sentiments.

She says: 'I've been offered jobs with a number of the big City firms which I instruct, and I've never wanted to accept them.

My role now is much wider than just being a lawyer, and I wouldn't be able to use the expertise which I have in private practice.

All the other reasons why I left private practice haven't changed -- the hours, the fact that I hate billing people and the fact that I'm not really motivated by helping people make lots of money.

In private practice, it's all just about the bottom line'.Ms Davies does not invite outside firms to tender for Nirex's work via beauty parades.

She prefers to use the contacts which she developed during her time at Edwards Geldard, often instructing solicitors whom she met when they were acting for sides opposing her.

She currently uses Slaughter and May for corporate work, Nabarro Nathanson for mineral planning law -- '[Nabarros] took in the legal department of British Coal when it was privatised so they know all about holes in the ground, which is what we do,' she says -- and Sharp Pritchard for parliamentary agency work.'We tend to rely on outside firms for the non-contentious stuff because the contentious stuff is so politically sensitive that we are best positioned to deal with it,' she says.

'There is no lawyer in Slaughter and May who knows the ins and outs of radioactive substances legislation like I do, so there wouldn't be any point in instructing them.'The transparency policy is Ms Davies's baby.

She is Nirex's project manager for transparency and it was a major triumph for her when the board adopted her recommendations.

'We have done our research and believe that no other company has a transparency policy like ours,' she says.Nirex's code of practice on access to information pledges to respond to requests for information by individual members of the public and any organisations, regardless of whether they are based in the UK or can show an interest in obtaining the information.

The policy also says that Nirex aims to supply requested information within 20 working days and to give out information that was created before the code came into effect.Of course restrictions apply.

In particular, Nirex has invested millions in international scientific research, and needs to safeguard that intellectual property.

But Ms Davies is optimistic that her code is a significant move towards reversing her company's chequered fortunes.

'The transparency policy does run counter to commercial instincts,' she adds proudly.