From day one, even before they find their way to the canteen, law students hear about Wildy & Sons, the family firm of legal booksellers famous for its picturesque setting.

The shop straddles Lincoln's Inn Archway connecting Carey Street with New Square, which at one time was a carriageway on whose footpaths the shop now stands.Wildy's has occupied the archway premises since it was set up in 1830.

Forty years ago it expanded into the ground floor of neighbouring 3 New Square.

Workmen knocking a hole through into the new premises discovered a half-panelled door which had once led onto the carriageway.

The door, with one of its original glass panels intact, remains in the shop.Another feature that has endeared Wildy's to generations of lawyers is its size: it is a very small shop.

'In the autumn,' says John Sinkins, the company secretary, 'we get as many as 40 customers at once.

We refer to it affectionately as the student rush.

We all have to wear crash helmets.' Wildy's remains a family concern, although the last Wildy died nearly 30 years ago.

The Sinkins' connection began in 1895 when Mr Sinkins' grandfather became a partner.

John's father, WE Sinkins, joined the firm in 1930.

He will be 84 in November and still works four days a week.

'He is still very much an influence in the firm,' John Sinkins says.

'He is able to preserve the old traditions without standing in the way of new technology.'Hi-tech extends only to the accounting system (although this is kept out of sight so as 'not to spoil the image', Mr Sinkins says, not altogether joking).

The stock is 'man-driven', and the booksearch service is organised as a waiting list, recorded on postcards, with the name of the book sought on one side and that of the seeker on the other.

The simplicity of the system confuses some librarians, Mr Sinkins says.

They get more puzzled still when a book ordered by a predecessor in the 1950s turns up via Wildy's.

'When that happens we send it on for a bit of fun.

We realise that after 40 years, they may not still want the book.'There are other legal booksellers, but Wildy's is probably unique because, in addition to new books, it has a vast secondhand department encompassing everything from the latest paperbacks to rare antiquarian books, and it also offers valuation and binding and repairing services.

Prints and maps make up a large part of the business, with stock ranging from modern reproductions to 17th century deeds written on parchment.'Americans love them.

They feel they are taking a bit of old England home with them.

The documents do look nice framed, particularly if they have a red seal.' And they are reasonably priced.

Exceptional examples apart, old deeds of indenture sell from £10 to £50, and prints go for anything from £2 to £100.It seems difficult for staff to leave Wildy's.

Harry Goss, for instance, now aged 86, retired some years ago, but still comes in one day a week, and the newest member of the 14-strong team - aside from a student - has been with the company for seven years.

'If you fit in with the community here, you've got a job for life,' Mr Sinkins says.Everyone works closely together, including Mr Sinkins and his three fellow directors, helping in the shop at busy times.

He says, somewhat wistfully, that it is easy to lose touch.

'I started as a delivery boy in 1968.

Within two or three years I reckoned I knew every new book being published.

Now I have to rely on the youngsters.' To illustrate the point, a member of staff appeared and reeled off without pause for thought a list of the top ten bestselling legal volumes.Mr Sinkins is principally responsible for customer accounts.

'We have had to educate our customers to the modern world, in which suppliers expect to be paid within 30 days,' he says.

'At one time, barristers saw nothing wrong in not paying for ten or 11 months.

My father was horrified at first when he heard we were writing to our customers to ask for money, but we rarely got complaints.

Most of our customers are really good now.'Some 40% of Wildy's secondhand trade is overseas - largely Commonwealth countries, but increasingly also the EU - although the firm never advertises abroad.

'So many students come here from places like Malaysia and Hong Kong, and they get to know us and when they go home they keep in touch.'There is also a thriving trade with those countries in past editions of many volumed works such as Halsbury's.Customers in this country range from the rawest legal recruit to High Court judges, QCs and senior partners as well as large commercial companies buying for their in-house legal libraries.

Recently, US law firms have joined the list as more and more are setting up offices in London and continental Europe.

Not all Wildy's customers have pleasant experiences.

One, back in the early 1960s, was a well known judge.

'We used to open on Saturday mornings then,' Mr Sinkins says.

'The judge liked to spend the morning browsing in the secondhand department, and because it was Saturday, he used to wear a tatty old coat and trilby.'At the time we had a rare spate of shoplifting.

(We still have the spyholes in the cupboard, which the police advised us to install.) Anyway, we caught the shoplifter in the act and called the police, who turned up very quickly, rushed in and promptly arrested the judge.'They apparently took some persuading that they had the wrong man, but the judge, says Mr Sinkins, took it very well.

'In my experience, the more important a person, the nicer he or she is.

It's the baby barristers and newly qualified solicitors who can be quite snooty, but generally speaking, our customers are very nice people.'In this category he includes Lord Denning - 'a real gentleman' - who on one occasion ended up clutching Wildy's staff kettle with one hand while autographing his latest book for a volatile French employee with the other.

The shop also gets its share of odd requests.

'It's not uncommon for someone to come in and ask for a law book that is green,' says Mr Sinkins.

Surprisingly, it can often be tracked down.

'We start by asking what the subject is.

If it's tort, for instance, it's likely to be Winfield.' The customer could be a student who has seen a lecturer waving a green book around, but has not bothered to write down the title, or a lay person, who has visited his solicitor, seen him referring to a green book and feels he ought to get one too.Its picturesque setting amidst the gaslights of Lincoln's Inn has put Wildy's in the limelight on many occasions: Rumpole, A Fish Called Wanda and 20 years ago a remake of David Copperfield.

It also fields requests from film and TV companies for '35 feet of 1930s law books'.

'We don't actively seek this work,' Mr Sinkins says.

For one thing, fulfilling the request is time consuming and it is difficult to know how much to charge.

For another, almost invariably, one or two books go missing.An organisation of Wildy's vintage should by rights have a ghost and it does, although not at Lincoln's Inn but at its warehouse in Crystal Palace, a former Victorian Wesleyan chapel.

No-one knows who the ghost is, or rather was, but he is known as Humphrey.

He manifests himself largely by making noises, usually at a distance, although Mr Sinkins' favourite Humphrey tale places him closer to hand.It concerns an employee, now dead, who was on his fourth trip to the warehouse in a vain search for a book that the index stated was definitely there.

About to leave empty handed yet again, a book popped out of the shelves at his feet - and there it was.

It had been misfiled and as Mr Sinkins' grandfather used to say, a book out of place is a book lost.

Humphrey, the ghost of Wildy's warehouse, had gone and found it.