Comment: As a practising solicitor and managing partner of a Dublin law firm I feel it's worthwhile making a few observations on John McManus's interesting Business Opinion, published on Monday, on the profits of Irish law firms and the motivation of Irish lawyers.

As the article points out there are 555 people enrolling as new solicitors with the Law Society this year. Added to the existing number of practising solicitors (6,593 in July 2004 according to the Law Society) we will soon have almost 7,250 solicitors practising in Ireland.

John McManus speculates that the new qualifiers are more likely to be "in it for the money" rather than fired by a desire to make Ireland a better place.

Although I'm sure that is not entirely false, I doubt that young lawyers are any less or more altruistic than their equivalents in other professions or fields of commerce. I would also like to believe that other factors might influence the career choice of young people.

A profession might be seen as interesting, exciting or simply be the flavour of the month.

Of the 555 new solicitors some will choose to seek careers in business law, others in family law, and the vast majority will end up in general practice in cities and towns across Ireland.

In Ireland most of the business law is practised by a dozen, largely Dublin-based firms. According to the 2004 Law Directory the top 12 firms house around 950 lawyers, or about 13 per cent of all practitioners in Ireland.

It's therefore probably fair to speculate that of this year's qualifiers no more than 15 per cent, or about 85 solicitors, are destined for the business law firms.

The other 85 per cent will take up non-business law related activity, some making "Ireland a better place", and some not, depending on the person.

It is certainly true that business law firms in Ireland don't officially publish their financials. This is because they are unlimited partnerships. However, it does not make these companies any more secretive or tight-lipped than other similarly organised businesses like accountancy or engineering firms, or indeed medical practices.

Furthermore there are opportunities for business journalists to research the financial details of law firms should they wish to do so. For example, sums paid to law firms by government clients are frequently published and should in any case be readily available under the Freedom of Information Act. Also there is a rapidly developing ethic of transparency within leading law firms regarding their financial affairs.

Among other things market requirements and indeed progressive thinking at management level in some firms have stimulated this ethic. For instance, firms are now frequently asked to disclose details such as their turnover and level of insurance cover when competitively bidding for work. Failure to provide this information usually results in lost business.

In more progressive firms there is now an instinctive will to co-operate with rather than shy away from the media. It would, for example, be interesting to see how John McManus might fare if he asked some selected law firms what their turnover might be.

Granted his questions wouldn't be welcomed everywhere, but I'm sure he could get some information which might save him from having to extrapolate statistics from the London legal market. I have no problem in volunteering that Mason Hayes & Curran's turnover last year was just in excess of €20 million.

Nowadays business law is a service industry working within a professional framework. Lawyers contribute to Ireland's economic success by operating at world class levels for their Irish and international clients.

It's significant that none of the large international law firms has opened an office in Dublin. Indeed the only significant foreign entrant to our domestic marketplace recently shut up shop.

Irish business lawyers are competent and competitive. They perform to or exceed client expectations and if they're well remunerated they deserve it.

Firms like mine invest heavily in Ireland's economic future with state of the art information technology systems, big wage bills and massive rent commitments in Dublin and New York. As for the description of lawyers "trousering" large profits, in my firm those profits are as likely to be handbagged as trousered!

In terms of firm finances there is probably less sensitivity to providing information than is generally assumed, and rightly so. It's in the interests of lawyers that clients recognise them to be competent in the conduct of their own affairs, as well as their clients' affairs.

Declan Moylan is managing partner of Mason Hayes & Curran