The National Assembly for Wales opens its doors in June.

Many see it as wholly irrelevant to the bulk of the solicitors' profession.

Such an attitude is shortsighted, misconceived, and simply wrong.Although the assembly can only pass secondary legislation -- the Scottish Parliament will be able to pass both primary and secondary legislation -- it can be expected to have a major impact on the affairs of individuals and businesses located in Wales, and perhaps less obviously, but to just as large an extent, on the affairs of businesses and individuals who may not be located in Wales, but who have interests in Wales.

All solicitors who have such businesses or individuals as clients need to know about this.

They will need to know the 18 areas of law where the assembly will be making secondary legislation, set out in schedule two of the Act:1.

Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food2.

Ancient monuments and historic buildings3.

Culture4.

Economic development5.

Education and training6.

The environment7.

Health and health services8.

Highways9.

Housing10.

Industry11.

Local government12.

Social services13.

Sport and recreation14.

Tourism15.

Town and country planning16.

Transport17.

Water and flood defence18.

The Welsh language.As an example of the need for widespread knowledge of the assembly's output across England and Wales, consider a client moving from Sunderland to Swansea, using Sunderland solicitors.

Those Sunderland solicitors will need to know the applicable planning and environmental law in Wales, and maybe highways and water law as well.Solicitors will also need to know that assembly-generated secondary legislation will affect everything in Wales -- individuals, land, businesses.

And although divergences between law in Wales and law in England are likely to begin small, it seems inconceivable that a body of sixty elected assembly members will not quickly want to flex its political muscle.

Here will be an opportunity for the Law Society to lobby for law reform -- effective lobbying of the assembly could act as a way of pioneering reforms later adopted at Westminster.Furthermore, it is likely that the assembly will gain additional functions once it has earned its spurs.

For instance, while there are at present no Lord Chancellor's Department functions transferred to Cardiff, will not the assembly seek transfer of these, and sooner rather than later?Just as the introduction of European law in 1972-1973 involved practitioners in learning new sources of legal materials, so the advent of the national assembly for Wales must mean the introduction of new elements in the syllabus of the qualifying law degree.

It will no longer be enough just to learn constitutional and administrative law and the English legal system -- the Welsh legal system will also have to be part of the core syllabus.If this is not done, then the risk is of ghettoisation, of creating a cadre of practitioners in Wales with skills and knowledge about the assembly and its output, but a cadre who may find it difficult to move away from Wales to practise law.

The flipside is risking allowing the creation of real barriers to freedom of movement into Wales for legal practitioners from outside.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.

The Law Society is working to raise awareness -- there is a series of seminars being organised on the Act, the next being at The House of Lords on Wednesday 27 January.

We are at present a united profession in England and Wales, we need to remain so.