Imagine sole practitioners, in-house legal counsel and managing partners sitting down with other business executives to learn something from each other. This could be the shape of things to come if lawyers increasingly see the benefits of taking on a Masters in Business Administration, or MBA.

The US concept of the MBA has now firmly taken root in the UK with 118 business schools offering full-time, part-time, broad-based and niche courses. A plethora of business schools across the country are providing and promoting MBA courses to a range of students with diverse business backgrounds. Few of these teaching institutions, however, have tailored the ideas of the MBA to legal professionals.

Furthermore, many solicitors appear reluctant at the very least and most seem adverse to the idea of taking time out to do an MBA. Many lawyers do not see the need to address management issues when the much more important task of practising the letter of the law is closer to hand.

However, Grant Howell, managing partner of Charles Russell, is not one of them. "If a lawyer is also involved in management then they should do an MBA," he says. "As a breed lawyers are not good managers and as MBAs are focused on management and business it would assist most lawyers in management to do one."

Howell is one of a new wave of partners who are starting to recognise the importance of quality management skills that are needed to run a law firm in the 21st century. He is also a graduate of the MBA in Legal Practice offered by Nottingham Law School.

Currently this is the only UK MBA that is specifically tailored for lawyers. Peter Jones, chief executive and dean of the law school, says that "it was set up to do something about the fact that there were no means for senior practitioners to go 'back to school' for a Masters with a professional focus".

Busy lawyers do not have the time to attend a university full-time for several months, so the three-year course concentrates on study weekends based on modules. These include modules on the economics of legal practice, managing knowledge and managing change. Howell admits that his MBA was time-consuming and says that any partner taking such a course needs the full support and backing from their firm as a whole, as well as from individual colleagues.

"For this to happen the firm needs to see a point to their lawyers taking an MBA – in my case it made business sense because I was becoming managing partner, I had the full-backing as well as the funding from Charles Russell," Howell says.

Manchester-based partner and head of construction and engineering at Eversheds, Alison Staniforth agrees: "Having a good grasp of management principles is necessary as a partner in a successful 21st century law firm," she says. Staniforth, also a graduate of the Nottingham Law School MBA believes that to complete an MBA is incredibly useful. "I strongly recommend that lawyers, especially at partner level, take an MBA if they can, although some lawyers are notoriously arrogant about the need to take one," she adds.

Peter Rees, head of litigation at Norton Rose believes the benefits of an MBA are wide-ranging. "There is an ill-thought assumption that management can be done without any training. You train to become a lawyer, yet management seems to be one of those things people are left to do sometimes with disastrous results," Rees says. "I did not want to be one of those people, especially when given the task of managing one of the larger departments at Norton Rose," he adds.

The problem remains, however, that many UK lawyers have always regarded training as a poor relation to hands-on experience. One partner at a City firm says she received a mixed reaction when she informed colleagues that she was taking on an MBA.

"People told me that it would be a complete waste of time, although they are perhaps the nervous-minded solicitors who do not see we are running a business in a time when there is ever-increasing competition."

Yet these partners appear to be the exception rather than the norm.

Many partners in management positions still fail to recognise that managing a law firm in the present day is like managing any other business. "Private legal practice is seen as one of the last bastions of the old-school approach to business in the UK and it needs to be shaken up, encouraging lawyers onto MBAs could be a viable way to achieve this," says one City firm partner.

But what of the choice of MBAs for partners keen to pursue one? The MBA in Legal Practice at the Nottingham Law School is the only one in the UK tailored to legal practice, but some believe that lawyers may actually benefit from following a more general MBA.

"The bonus of doing a general MBA is that you get to meet people from all walks of life, not just lawyers, and you are able to draw on a range of experience, ultimately clients are not going to be other lawyers," says Sarah Rosser, in-house legal counsel for Orange.

Rosser studied for an MBA with the Open University Business School while taking her Legal Practice Course. "In private practice the best lawyers are promoted to management and these lawyers are expected to be involved in the managing, marketing, public relations and human resources aspects of the firm when all their previous experience is in law," she says.

For many lawyers the ultimate goal is to attain partnership and kudos, but they are notoriously bad at managing.

But times are changing for the future management of law firms. Are lawyers keeping up with the pace? Thirty years ago, the MBA barely existed in the UK, today you are hard-pressed to find a university or business school that does not offer the MBA or at least a variant of the qualification.

Yet although the MBA degree has diversified during the past few years to offer industry specific training for accountants, public-sector workers, lawyers and even footballers, a large majority of solicitors are failing to see its worth.

The magic circle firms Legal Week contacted were unaware of how many, if any, of their lawyers were currently taking or had completed an MBA, with most unwilling to comment on the subject. "It is not something our partners are interested in or wish to comment on," said one spokeswoman for a magic circle firm.

Once seen as a full-time qualification for the City high flyer, the MBA is now increasingly studied part-time. Distance learning is also capturing an increasing share of the market. Yet statistics from the Open University Business School MBA programme for this academic year show that only 1% of all students graduating are drawn from the legal practice, and out of 1,500 students who will finish the course at the end of May, only two are solicitors.

This year at the London Business School there are only three students on the popular MBA course with legal backgrounds none of whom wish to go back into private practice.

Rosser, however, is optimistic. "Few solicitors think business degrees are important, but I believe this is changing."

Increasingly, the quality of training offered by firms is becoming a key selling point for firms in the recruitment market and today's young lawyers are realising the advantages of an MBA as one of the many tools available to a successful legal career. Eversheds' Staniforth agrees that opinion is shifting. "Eversheds offers a mini-version of the MBA I took, it is a course offered to management over a period of several days in conjunction with the Nottingham Law School. Things are changing as management realise they often have a lot to learn."

Professor Gary Slapper, director of Law at the Open University, which works in conjunction with the University's Business School and MBA course, believes that all lawyers should seriously consider taking an MBA. "Legal practice has dramatically changed in the past 30 years, many law firms have become big businesses and as such they need people with business expertise," he says.

"It is no good having people running a business if they are not trained in the style of an MBA, they cannot fudge it."

Slapper believes it is not possible for lawyers who take on the role of managing a business to do it successfully without having some business acumen and a knowledge of specific disciplines such as marketing and accounting.

He thinks that in future there will be a rise in the number of lawyers taking MBAs.

"Depending on their size, most law firms will need at least a couple of lawyers who are also business qualified, a dual expertise is extremely useful and gaining the transferable skills that an MBA can offer is in the best interests of the business," he adds.