The market for legal services, including advocacy, is a developed and competitive one. With the imminent and wide-ranging changes under the Clementi reforms, it is also one which faces great upheaval. As always in such times of change, lawyers are trying to position themselves to both maximise their current business and be best placed to take advantage of future opportunities.

There has been much talk of the reforms heralding large numbers of barristers going to work as in-house advocates for solicitors' firms. There have been various high-profile appointments. What has been less commented on is the flow of talent the other way from solicitors' firms into chambers. At 13 Old Square, Chris Jarman is a former partner at Payne Hicks Beach, while many other chambers could boast similar examples and other solicitors are in the process of making the move.

Why would anyone move from the relative security and stability of life within a firm to self-employment at the Bar? Likewise, why is the Bar so keen to have them? In a sense, solicitors joining chambers is the logical extension of a trend of barristers moving within chambers which has really developed over the last 20 years or so.

Barristers moving between chambers to suit their career has become commonplace. Chambers have moved from 'membership for life' to far greater flexibility. The logical extension of this is to encourage talent from outside the Bar.

Advocacy is a performance skill. You use it or lose it. Just as boxers become 'ring rusty' unless they fight regularly, the same occurs with advocates. If a solicitor has proved he has the necessary ability doing some advocacy work while within a firm, or even working effectively as a full-time advocate there, he is likely to have a greater variety of work and opportunity to use his skills once at the Bar. For someone who has shown they have the requisite ability, the temptation to see how far they can develop and use such skills can be irresistible.

That temptation can override the risk involved. Working alone (albeit able to bounce points off colleagues), as opposed to having the back-up of a team and firm resources, can be a tricky yet attractive business. You cannot rely on profit percentages or fringe benefits, just the fees you earn from the work you can get.

As against that, the experience can be liberating. There is much less form-filling and little, if any, time devoted to management issues. A move to the Bar represents a chance for a solicitor who has considerable legal skills, and has shown the ability to be an advocate, to spend virtually all his time doing that which he wants to do.

In smaller firms particularly, dissatisfaction with fees is one of the classic causes of a partnership break-up. This is often due to partners who feel that they are bringing in a disproportionate share of the fees and receiving too small a portion of the rewards. Those pressures do not exist in chambers because you are paid for what you do.

Although age discrimination should obviously not occur anywhere, the age range for people flourishing in different jobs does differ. Provided they stay in good health, performance advocates can stay at the height of their powers until well past normal retirement age. Some solicitors are undoubtedly attracted by the fact that, as well as being an opportunity to use their legal and advocacy skills to develop practice, if they do well at the Bar they have as good a chance for a prolonged career as anywhere.

Many solicitors retain strong links with the firms they have left. If their reputation was sufficient to attract chambers' interest in the first place, and make the firm want to use them as advocates while they were there, they are likely to still rate them as advocates and send them work once they are at the Bar.

Nor are other solicitors averse to using them. A former solicitor has seen what it is like on the other side of the profession, and is well placed to understand the job the solicitor has to do and the pressures he works under. That makes a former solicitor very well placed to do the barrister's job in such a way as to work effectively with his instructing solicitor as part of a team. That is, after all, the best way to win cases.

That immediately shows why former solicitors of the requisite ability are worth recruiting. They understand the needs of, and hence cater for, the target market. Moreover, their existing contacts are likely to send work to them. Thus chambers will be acquiring another talented person, both increasing the range of advocates and skills that can be offered to instructing solicitors, and increasing the turnover of chambers and contributing to expenses.

Since solicitors understand that a solicitor going to the Bar is pursuing a career change rather than becoming a direct competitor, if anything such moves strengthen the relationship between the chambers and the firm rather than being detrimental to it.

Barristers are self-employed. The time spent identifying, recruiting and training pupils is a significant cost. Chambers do this and will always continue to because it is important for individual chambers to be bringing in new talent, just as it is important for the Bar itself. It is much easier to identify and acquire solicitors who have already demonstrated legal skills and advocacy experience and who want to take the next step to the Bar.

There is always a percentage of high-flying student recruits to the Bar who decide that the Bar is not for them and leave. Very few, if any, solicitors who have decided to make the change do that. They are experienced and knowledgeable enough to know what they are getting, and that it is what they want. For chambers, it is an easy way to supplement graduate recruitment and enhance the skills available at all levels of seniority.

Solicitors can also help bring new and much-needed skills to the Bar. They know what it is like to have to deal directly with clients. They know from the other side of the fence what pleases and exasperates solicitors. They know how firms run and market themselves and this involves commercial skills that are already becoming vital to chambers, and are likely to be even more so after the Clementi reforms are introduced.

Chambers essentially offer a legal and advocacy skill base. It is no surprise that they sensibly cast their net as wide as possible to get the best talent available to supplement this, particularly when it involves acquiring people who understand the commercial needs of the marketplace, which is so crucial at this time.

Michael Booth QC is a barrister at 13 Old Square in London and Kings Chambers in Manchester and Leeds.