Lawyers are not normally associated with cutting-edge technology but Sussex solicitor Dudley Dean could claim to be one of the legal profession's IT pioneers.

Now the oldest partner in Brighton-based law firm Dean Wilson Laing, 68-year-old Mr Dean introduced the first IT equipment into the firm back in the early 70s.

Thirty years on, he is Dean Wilson Laing's computer systems supremo, still finding the subject "great fun, interesting and sometimes a bit worrying!"

As in many other law practices, IT has brought change to Dean Wilson Laing.

Internet research is now routine and the firm's library will soon be used for other purposes as the contents of its many leatherbound volumes are transferred to CD-Rom.

Mr Dean, a lifelong technology enthusiast, spotted the potential of IT, then still in its infancy, when the firm was assigned a huge and complex legal task.

He said: "One of our biggest clients was a property company which owned more than 50 blocks of flats for which I had to produce individual leases in a hurry.

"It was a colossal job and I had to choose whether to go down the old-fashioned route, taking on more staff, or go to almost unknown technological territory."

Mr Dean had been "digging about" in the developing technology for some time and he decided this experience equipped him for the new challenge.

For £1,700 - "quite a lot of money then" - he bought an electric typewriter coupled to a "brain", a paper tape reader and punch.

With this primitive equipment, nicknamed 'Fred', he was able to produce a basic template for the leases and add variations as required.

"Fred paid for himself easily with that one job!

"It meant I was able to complete the whole thing myself."

Mr Dean said that despite the huge advances since then, many firms are not getting much more out of their computers than he got from Fred.

He said: "Word-processing software hasn't changed all that much. Neither is it much more reliable!"

Mr Dean still has fond memories of Fred, whose useful life continued for a number of years until he was finally replaced by a system operated by Commodore equipment.

"That could do almost everything we needed.

"Certainly it was not capable of desktop publishing but then working lawyers should not get involved in that sort of thing!"

The system was to last the firm seven or eight years when Mr Dean decided the time had come to "get networked".

He plumped for Novell, which was dominant at the time, and has never regretted it.

"I know its not fashionable now, but it is much more reliable than the fashionable product from a famous company!

"I would not contemplate having networking software that is not absolutely robust.

"Breakdowns produce an office full of very worried people who cannot get on with their work!"

But, said Mr Dean, technology has only just started to bring about radical changes in the culture of the legal profession.

"Word processing doesn't change the way of working. It just allows you to produce more in the same way.

"The coming changes, which are unpredictable, will change what we do as well as the way we do it and will produce a real cultural revolution.

"There will be a lot of resistance to these changes but technology will force them on us."