EASTERN WAYSThe Law Society's annual statistical report 1997, based on data from the Solicitors I ndemnity fund, showed:-- There are 259 firms employing 1,541 solicitors in East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire).-- 5.8% of firms in East Anglia have 11 or more partners.

This the largest proportion of firms of this size outside London.ROBERT VERKAIK TALKS TO EAST ANGLIAN SOLICITORS ABOUT THE LOCAL BUSINESSES OF AGRICULTURE, RACING AND RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTSIn the East Anglian market town of Newmarket the business of equine procreation is extremely profitable.

The best pedigree stallions are hired out by the local stud-farms to service an international array of mares, an activity which can generate an annual turnover of £200,000.

Taylor Vinters, the Cambridge-based law firm, has profited from this industry.Christine Berry, the firm's managing partner elect, says Taylor Vinters is one of only four firms in the country which has a specialist bloodstock and equestrian practice.Since the merger of Taylors, the Newmarket practice, with Vinters in Cambridge ten years ago, the firm has retained and developed its close links with the horse-racing community.As with all niche parties it helps to be passionate about the work, offering that something extra to give added value to the client.

Taylor Vinters's added value is in Rachael Flynn, an assistant solicitor and amateur jockey who has won her first two races.Meanwhile, the vast waterlands of East Anglia support a surprisingly diverse number of legal practices.

In Bury St Edmunds, the five-partner firm of Gross & Co has a niche Russian immigration practice.

The Russians are mainly from St Petersburg and go to East Anglia to set up joint ventures with UK businesses in the region.

The legal work mainly involves advising on residency and work permits.Senior partner Graeme Kirk, chairman of the International Bar Association's immigration section, handles most of these cases.

His only explanation for why the Russians have chosen East Anglia to set up in business is that the region offers them the first geographical ports of call, Felixstowe and Harwich.Mr Kirk says: 'Curiously enough, a number of the Russians have joint ventures in places like Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.' A now familiar scenario is a Russian taking a 50% stake in an East Anglian engineering company which produces products for the Russian market.This influx of Russians does not, says Mr Kirk, represent an attempt by the St Petersburg mafia to annex Suffolk.

'I have not heard of anyone offering to buy a business with a suitcase full of money,' says Mr Kirk.

Instead, Gross & Co is looking towards Russia to expand its own contracts and now has an associate office in St Petersburg.Mr Kirk, educated at the University of East Anglia, began doing immigration work in London at Radcliffes & Co and then in 1984 decided to move out of the capital for the more peaceful environs of Suffolk.His clients asked him to continue to advise them so he took some of them with him and now has an immigration practice which stretches way beyond East Anglia.Taylor Vinters, a 22-partner general commercial law firm, also pulls in work beyond the region.

Through its legal help line, Taylor Vinters lawyers now act for the National Trainers Federation, the trade union body for flat and national hunt trainers, on an almost daily basis.

The firm is also currently advising a number of trainers into a police investigation into allegations of racehorse doping.The buying and selling of competition horses is often the subject of contractual disputes.

Ms Berry is currently advising on a case where an international dressage horse ha s been valued at £200,000.

Ms Berry says: 'People are obviously very quick to pounce if they haven't bought what they think they've bought.'Providing the services of stud horses is now an international business with multi-jurisdictional implications.Ms Berry explains: 'Where stallions are sent to "stand" in other countries and we are drawing up the agreements, we make sure there is an English law jurisdiction clause in the contract.'Both Taylor Vinters and Gross & Co have strong commercial practices which constitute the guts of their businesses and represent more traditional sources of legal work.The core business areas served by the legal community of East Anglia consist chiefly of agriculture, private client, high tech and education.

East Anglia is the fastest growing region in the UK and comprises 10% of the population.

It has an arable dominated farming economy which has largely escaped the ravages inflicted on the beef farming industry by the BSE crisis.Today agricultural law is much more than just seed crop dispute litigation or farm house conveyancing.The lawyers have to follow the food stuff right through from cultivation to processing and distribution where it has become a high tech industry.

Agricultural lawyers also have to be able to advise on EU law relating to issues such as subsidies and quotas.During the last 20 years, lawyers in the top East Anglian law firms have also been providing legal services to the North Sea oil industry.Mills & Reeve, the largest law firm in the region with 400 staff in its Norwich and Cambridge offices, has set out to offer commercial legal services for all these businesses in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.Unlike many other commercial firms of its size, Mills & Reeve, a member of the Norton Rose M5 Group, has retained private client work capability tailored to support the local business community.

Advising both the region's businesses and their owners has created a burgeoning practice, says Mills & Reeve managing partner Duncan Ogilvy.Mills & Reeve and Taylor Vinters have also developed links with the universities.

'We have over 50 university clients which include all the universities in East Anglia and most of the Cambridge colleges.This makes us one of the two leading firms in the country in terms of the numbers of universities as clients,' adds Mr Ogilvy.

Mills & Reeve also acts for a number of Oxford University colleges.

Universities are a source of legal work which can range widely to include judicial reviews by students who claim they deserve better exam results.In its niche practice areas Mills & Reeve has found it beneficial to employ expert consultants or lawyers with specialist non-legal back-grounds.The firm has recently recruited a retired senior bursar of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a university vice-chancellor.

'It makes the payroll look a little unconventional but I'm convinced it's the way to go,' adds Mr Ogilvy.And it is this type of creative thinking that has helped firms like Mills & Reeve become so much more than just farming lawyers.Microsoft chief Bill Gates's plans to turn Cambridge into a silicon chip university city will further test the innovative skills of the region's law firms.

'He's made quite a splash and we expect interesting developments very shortly,' comments Mr Ogilvy.STEPHEN WARD ASKS HOME COUNTY LAWYERS WHETHER THEY ARE LIVING IN THE COUNTRY TO ESCAPE THE CITY, OR TO COMMUTE TO ITThe belt of three home counties running to the north east of London seems at first sight to be unpr omising territory for legal business.Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire have huge numbers of small high streets, and according to Tim Toghill, the Law Society's eastern region secretary, still include a large proportion of general practice firms.The commercial danger is that they will be left focusing too much on areas such as family, crime and conveyancing which suffer from the greatest competition, or where the income is derived from legal aid and therefore uncertain in the medium-term future.But firms in the region say traditional business is not to be scorned, as long as it is not relied on exclusively.

Gareth Woodfine & Partners, which has offices in Bedford and the nearby market town of Sandy, started 15 years ago, and planned largely to avoid traditional high street work.

But Nicholas Davies, senior partner in the 11-partner firm, says: 'The first few years, because we had a commercial flavour, we thought we wouldn't bother with divorce.

When we did go in to it, we realised how wrong we'd been.'His firm's experience is that a practice does not have to spread its net far afield to be successful.

He says: 'I'd guess that 80% of our work is really very local, and another 15% is within the region.' Only 5% is from further afield, usually because a client has moved away and stayed with the firm.Other similar-sized firms in the region are less positive about traditional high street work.

Ian Anderson is a partner in Curwens, a 13-partner firm with offices on the Hertfordshire borders, running up the length of the A10 corridor, in Waltham Abbey, Cheshunt, Hoddesdon and Royston, as well as at the London end of the road, in Enfield.

He says the firm's future will be away from legal aid work, which currently accounts for about 15% of business.'The government is trying to set up firms to compete with each other just on price,' he says.

In the short term the firm will continue with legal aid work, but longer term, Mr Anderson predicts: 'It's adios.' Mr Toghill says many firms have developed niches and specialisms.

They recognise that size is not crucial to be a market leader, taking heart for the example of London and Manchester firm, Leigh Day & Co, which has won major personal injury business in recent years with fewer than ten partners.Iliffes Booth Bennett, which has one office in Ingatestone, Essex, and others in regions neighbouring the north eastern home counties, has 20 partners, each specialising in a different area.

Matthew Arnold & Baldwin, a 14-partner firm in Watford, has a commercial bias, but also a specialist family law section.The north east home counties have not seen many of the mergers which have been common in recent years in London and other big cities.

At the same time firms in the region have formed groupings of six to eight firms to share training overheads, Mr Toghill says.Some East Anglian firms encroach only on the outer reaches of the region.

The largely commercial Cambridge-based firm, Hewitson Becke & Shaw, has an office in Saffron Walden in Essex, for example, as well as others in Northampton, Peterborough and Newmarket.Mr Toghill explains that the peculiar characteristic of the north east home counties region is that a large proportion of the earning population can be seen every morning on the train platforms and motorways heading to London.The regions are in large part dormitories for the capital.

Another large group of people move into the area with no associations there other than work, and commonly stay only five years or so before moving to jobs in other regions.The challenge for solicitors is that many potential clients will look towards what they see as the choice and quality of London when they have serious legal business to tend to.Firms in these counties will be even more exposed than other parts of the country to the general weakening of the traditional geographical closeness of solicitor and client, when, facilitated by information technology and improving transport, the client takes his business to London firms.

But this breaking down of geographical ties is a threat only to less competitive firms.

Others, which tend to be newer, and perhaps therefore more innovative, have seen it as a way of breaking out from a narrow provincial town perspective.Kenneth Elliott & Rowe, based in Romford on the London side of Essex, has expanded by opening branches in other areas.

One of the 11 partners, Chris Dixon, recalls reading a Law Society paper in the late 1980s: 'It said the future for Greater London suburban high street firms was between bleak and non-existent.

Shortly after that, the property market collapsed.

We took the long view and decided to put ourselves where the work was rather than exhaust ourselves trying to create work or dominate the local Romford and Essex markets where our market share was already near maximum penetration given our practice area and location.'The firm discovered that its clients were divided between those on legal aid and relatively large companies.To cater for the corporate clients, they opened an office in London's Baker Street in 1993.

'We felt [our work] would be better regarded by both clients and professionals if carried out from central London rather than from Romford,' Mr Dixon says.'This move also side-stepped the image problems which working from Romford had generated when dealing with some corporate clients.' The firm also targeted overseas clients during the UK recession, and visited eastern Europe, China and the Middle East.Kenneth Elliott & Rowe, like Curwens, recognised that legal aid was going to be cut back either via eligibility reduction or some other drastic reform, and decided the Essex commuter belt would be too prosperous to generate enough work, so they opened a London east end office in Poplar.Another Essex firm, Wollastons, in Chelmsford, has grown to nine partners in the 13 years since it was set up in 1985 by concentrating on business and institutional clients, particularly in education.

They demonstrate how firms can benefit from the fluid nature of the region's boundaries and loyalties.

One of the partners, Nicholas Cook, says the firm invested heavily in information technology to make it easier to service clients farther afield, and the firm has clients from surrounding counties including Kent to the south east of London.But not all regional solicitors are adapting and changing to meet the future.

Mr Anderson was president of the Law Society in Hertfordshire last year, and says he met many older partners who are just hanging on until retirement.

He says: 'They are saying to the younger ones: "I don't envy you".'TIM WEEKES FINDS OUT WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LIVE AND WORK WITH THE M25 BETWEEN YOU AND THE RAT RACEClose to London and yet not of it: this is perhaps the best way to describe the east of England from the point of view of solicitors who work there.

While many who choose to practice in the region have made a conscious decision to retreat from or reject the option of a City or West End career, they also value the attractions, both professional and cultural, of London.

But by escaping from London, they feel they are gainin g a professional atmosphere that is far less pressured and far more relaxed than a career in the capital would allow them.In purely geographical terms, the east of England is a backwater.

As Tim Toghill, secretary of the Law Society's eastern region office, says: 'The A1 passes up the western side of East Anglia, so you do not pass through places such as Norwich on the way to anywhere else.' He says this isolation from the rest of England engenders a strong sense of community.

People in Norfolk and Suffolk are there because they want to be, rather than because it is convenient for getting to somewhere else.

'East Anglians tend to live and work in the same town,' he says.

This includes solicitors.

He says Norfolk and Suffolk have thriving local law societies where 'at least everyone goes to the annual dinner'.The region stretches further than Norfolk and Suffolk, of course.

Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Essex have many commuters pursuing the City careers that some of the local solicitors have rejected.

Peterborough and Cambridge, the latter a focus for high-technology businesses, are growing in importance as centres of commercial legal practice in their own right.But the sense of being outside London begins the moment you move outside the M25, according to Ian Anderson, partner in 200-year-old Hertfordshire firm Curwens and past president of the Hertfordshire Law Society.

When asked to cite the benefits of practising in Hertfordshire, he says without hesitation: 'It's a nice environment.

You have lovely country towns such as St Albans and Hemel Hempstead, and you have great homes available, near to where you work,' He says it is noticeable that while firms in the southern end of the county are geographically closer to Greater London, 'philosophically they are closer to the east of England.

London is a rate race, and the M25 forms a divide from that,' he says.Mr Anderson, who trained with Curwens, has been an east-of-England lawyer all his career, but for many it is the place they move to after training in London.

Miranda Reckitt, president of the Suffolk & North Essex Law Society, says: 'In common with a lot of other people in East Anglia, I am a London refugee.' She says it was the area's countryside, with its feeling of being undiscovered, combined with its easy access to London that first drew her.

'We're off the tourist trail here,' she says.

Ms Reckitt has, however, been a regular visitor both to London's theatres and its law courts.

She says the choice she and others have made in moving to the east of England is to forego the salaries they could have earned in London in place of a different lifestyle, avoiding the 'tremendous pressures' of a City career.

The whole flavour of practice is different as well.

Her firm, Kerseys of Ipswich, is 99 years old.

She says it values the continuing contact with families that regard the firm as 'their first port of call'.

'That personal connection is important,' she says.This could make the east of England seem the epitome of traditional country practice, but according to Martin Mears, the former Law Society president, it has in fact become a more competitive environment in which to practice law during the past ten years.

He set up his own firm in Great Yarmouth in 1967 after training and practising in London.

He says at the time it was 'extremely difficult to get going.

The old established firms were very entrenched.' That has all changed, he adds, with the growth of cut-price conveyancing and advertising.

'We are just two hours from London so it is just as cut-throat here as it is anywhere,' he says.

Mr Mears says that even in East Anglia there is 'little cohesive spirit among solicitors -- it's a dog-eat-dog profession'.

Miranda Reckitt says competition between firms in the region is mainly over the corporate work, which is in short supply.

This is one of the drawbacks a solicitor would have to consider in moving from London.

'Most firms want to get more corporate work, but there is only so much to be had,' she says.Another changing aspect of the legal world in the east of England is the loosening of ties between solicitors.

Ms Reckitt says that when she was an assistant 25 years ago, she met a large number of contemporaries in the local courts, and these acquaintances have endured to this day.

She says that young solicitors practising in the region now spend far less time in court, and so come into contact with far fewer solicitors.

'Everyone used to know everyone else, but it is not like that now,' she says.For many solicitors, however, the east of England will remain an attractive region to turn to after qualifying.

The major centres of legal activity, in Cambridge and Norwich, will continue to attract trainees, but elsewhere the number of firms training solicitors is small.

According to Ian Anderson, recent research by the Hertfordshire Law Society revealed there were only around 20 trainees in the county, a figure he says he found 'surprising'.New blood will continue to enter the region, however, as London solicitors leave in search of a less stressful life.

While the legal profession undergoes continuous change, the attractions of the wide open spaces of the east of England look set to endure.