When preparing for this event I wanted to use the theme of management but at first thought my career path owed nothing to management and was due wholly to luck. However, once I thought about it I realised there were times when I had made positive career decisions and you may find it useful if I give you some idea of how this worked along with some general advice on building up a freelance career. This is based on my own work experience which has been mostly in London and the South East.

I started by working at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS). That turned out to be the best training one could have as at the time you worked in all departments from cataloguing to information and query work with a good measure of shelving thrown in too! So it helps to look at the level of training and experience you are getting in your job.

When I took a career break to bring up my children I made sure I still kept in touch with old colleagues and also took a refresher course in law librarianship run by the LA - it was quite encouraging to find I had not forgotten everything I knew.

I started freelancing in 1982 after answering an advertisement in the Library Association Record from Jane James who was running Guildhall Information Services, and for the next 2-3 years I worked with her in a variety of firms before branching out on my own building up my own clientele.

I did everything from looseleaf filing to cataloguing, so my IALS training and experience came in useful and working with someone else meant having the support and backup for each other. However I felt I had the right training and experience to take on the work and this is important.

I was thrown into it because the opportunity came up but to those of you thinking about going freelance I would say:

· Contact freelancers and discuss work possibilities
· Make sure you have the experience to be flexible
· Keep your training up to date
· Think about how much and what type of work you want

If you do these things you will be in a good position for finding work.

On a practical level I had to think about organising keeping records, sending out invoices etc and almost immediately I decided to use an accountant to help me with tax returns and making up my books at the end of the year. This has paid off as it meant right from the start I was doing this correctly and (touch wood) have never had any problems with the Inland Revenue. I do not intend to go into this in any detail - anyone who is interested can read the article in the autumn Law Librarian for 2000.

Other considerations that you would need to think about now if setting up as a freelancer would be:

· Having a separate phone line and e-mail address for work
· Organising business cards and deciding how to describe yourself - librarian or legal information consultant?

· Do you want to put your mobile phone number on your cards or just give it to certain people?
· Think about what you are going to charge and be aware of all the expenses you need to cover. In at least one case I know a freelancer has had to take out professional indemnity insurance
· Are any freelancers thinking about a website?

I realised it was important to add to my skills and the opportunity came with the formation of Legal Research Training Group in the late 1980s when I joined with four other law librarians presenting courses on practical legal research - in those days concentrating on the printed works and aimed at trainees (although we also ran some courses for newly qualified librarians who were starting out in the legal field).

Subsequently the experience of public speaking acquired there has been put to use:

i) Presenting training courses at firms
ii) Contributing to BIALL through the Professional Standards and Development committee - Legal Reference Materials courses and speaking at the 2000 conference in Bristol

There are problems of training and keeping [yourself] up-to-date, and I am not sure I have solved these! Cost is important when you are paying for yourself but it is worth looking at BIALL, CLIG and LA courses. The Library Association is very useful if you join the relevant sections - e.g. Industrial and Commercial Libraries Group where several of our colleagues are active, and the Information Services Group that publishes Refer. Both these can be joined as part of your LA subscription at no extra cost.

Applying for conference bursaries from CLIG or BIALL can help you attend conferences - always useful venues for networking and increasing your knowledge.

It is hard to keep up with the technology if much of your work is in smaller firms with limited resources which is often the case for freelancers.

Finding work is easier in London and in the bigger cities and most of us find that it is through networking that most of our jobs are found - for example through other freelancers, or ex-partners of firms where we are working who leave and subsequently contact us to provide a library service in their new firms.

You can also look at the ads in the LA Appointments and on their website www.lisjobnet.org.uk as well as approaching agencies such as TFPL and Sue Hill who have a good understanding of the legal world.

I have found it essential to be flexible about what I will do - especially when first starting. I would do looseleafing but [would also] make sure the firm knew I had other skills and then point out that it was not cost effective for me to do this when I could find someone else to do this and guarantee that it would be done correctly. Being flexible about the type of work and organisation you work in will help you find work and help you to build up a range of useful skills and experience.

Use your network to ask for help when you find yourself working on your own dealing with a problem you can't solve - everyone is incredibly helpful even when they cannot solve the problem for you.

Having built up what I hoped was useful experience I decided to change the type of work I was doing about two years ago. I was turning down work and not really enjoying what I was doing so I passed on the work at my small firms to other people (networking again!) and took on what was for me more interesting and varied short term work. There has been plenty of work so far - one day I can be in Tunbridge Wells dealing with foot & mouth regulations and the next day in the City dealing with the New York Convention on Arbitration .

Other freelancers have made similar decisions e.g. deciding to take on "start up" jobs and then move on.

Is the legal environment any different from other specialised areas? I am not sure that it is but some of the characteristics are:

i) it is subject to economic pressures
ii) peopled by strong characters - you need to be outgoing
iii) always too much or too little work
iv) no real opportunity in the academic field as there is no money available for employing extra staff.
v) It is a small world so networking really pays off - certainly helped in London by regular meetings of freelancers - held in a wine bar (where else?!)

To summarize, the key attributes I believe help to establish a successful freelance career are flexibility, being multi skilled and keeping up with training and new developments and accessibility to clients and colleagues.