TradeNames:The tools of the trade may have changed in over 100 years, but the Lynch family is still practising law on Ormond Quay, writes Rose Doyle

Bryan Lynch, behind his large 1870 desk in the Liffey-side offices of Hughes Murphy Marcus Lynch, is every inch the old world, careful, courteously polite, gentleman solicitor of yore and Dickens. The manner and way of thinking are bred in the blood, he says, a consequence of the generations of solicitors in the Lynch family.

Four generations, to be precise and legal about it, beginning with his grandfather and founder of the firm, William Lynch: born 1869 in Glin, Co Limerick, died 1910 aged 49 in Dublin. By the time he died William had got the firm up and running, ensured continuity and established family footholds in two Dublin neighbourhoods.

Howth is the ballast, homeland to this particular Lynch family. Howth is where William Lynch and his bride went to live in 1889 and is where almost all of the descendents live today.

Number 12 Ormond Quay is the house by the Liffey where William set up the firm in 1894 and where the Lynch family has conducted the business of the law ever since. Tram and train lines have been and are the umbilical cord linking the two: from the early Howth tram to today's Dart.

Bryan Lynch is well prepared with the facts for the telling of the family story. He relates them in chronological order, appreciative of the lives and work of his forebears, of the building on the quays which has served them so well (and which could tell tales of the law that Bryan never will) and of the Liffey's course outside the window.

"We've been looking at that river from the time of Queen Elizabeth to that of Mary McAleese," he says. "If I couldn't see the river I'd retire. Here I am, 114 years on, working on an 1870 desk with hand-made locks and using a flat screen computer. It's a question of adapt or die. One has to."

But first things first. When William Lynch arrived in Dublin from Glin in the late 1800s he became a prison warden in Kilmainham Jail. "The Land Leaguers would have been the celebrity prisoners of the time," his grandson says. "He met and married Elizabeth O'Connor, daughter of the deputy governor of the jail, in 1889. The O'Connors were builders who built around Howth and Elizabeth had property there. They moved into Mount Pleasant, on Thormanby Road, a house with land around it. William studied law, qualified as a solicitor in September 1894 and took up rooms in this building to practice as William Lynch Solicitor.

"There weren't that many Catholics practising law at the time but the results of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 were coming through and he established a very good practice.

"There were four children of the marriage, two died and two survived. William died at a few years old, Nora died in 1916 when she was 16 of TB. Marcus and George survived. All went well until 1910 when grandfather William died suddenly of appendicitis.

"At that stage my father, Marcus, was studying law in what is now UCD so a man called Thomas J Deering was brought in to run the practice until he qualified in 1914."

Marcus's brother, George Lynch, qualified as a solicitor in 1916, went west and set up a practice in Carrick-on-Shannon. He married Frances O'Neill from Mullingar and, in the early 1920s, became State Solicitor for Leitrim and Sligo.

By 1917 William and Marcus, running the family firm in Dublin, had acquired the entire building at 12 Ormond Quay.

"The origins of this house," Bryan is especially appreciative, "go back to houses built here by the Duke of Ormond in the 1660s. They were pulled down in 1820 and rebuilt making this house and the one next door as one building. There's still an original 1660 fireplace in the basement."

Bryan Lynch's office has the high ceiling common to all the rooms in number 12, as well as nice plasterwork and long windows. It has an original marble fireplace too, "the only one of any worth" in the 1820 part of the building. On the wall behind the desk there hangs a framed, 1685, Charles II legal document dealing with the granting of land. Elsewhere there's an 1896 print of Grattan's parliament and the certificate appointing founder William Lynch a commissioner for oaths.

Marcus Lynch, in the early 20th century, worked in partnership with Thomas Deering until 1933, when he took complete charge of the firm.

"My father married Frances McLoughlin from Derry in September 1935," Bryan continues. "They went to live in a house built on the lands of Mount Pleasant which they called 'Brunnhilde', my father being a great Wagner fan and quite talented musically. His mother, Elizabeth, was still alive and living next door - I remember her vaguely as a femme formidable. She died in 1946. My brother, Gregory, was born in 1936, my brother, John Marcus, in 1938 and I, Bryan Francis, was born in 1941. We all went to Belvedere."

When Gregory qualified as a solicitor in 1957 he went into partnership with his father. John Marcus went into banking and Bryan Lynch became apprenticed to his father in 1958.

"When my father died, in September 1959 aged 69 of cancer, Gregory took over the practice. I became a practice partner in 1962. When my father died we called the firm Marcus A Lynch & Son and did so until 1994 when we truncated it to Marcus Lynch Solrs. My brother Gregory retired in the mid 1970s, early, and I became sole practitioner in 1980. In 1985 I brought in Hugh O'Neill as partner and we have partnered, as it were, ever since."

In September 1973 (September being a fateful month in the family) Bryan Lynch "married a lady called Louise Kissane. She's from Tipperary town and her family have a long history in pharmacy. We bought a house 200 metres down the road from 'Brunnhilde' and in 1976 our son, Marcus, was born. In 1980 we had our daughter, Harriette. Marcus did law in the University of Limerick, qualified in 2005 and is legal advisor to the C&C Group. Our daughter, Harriette, did business studies in TCD and dietetics in Chester University and is soon to return to Ireland."

The present generation member of the firm is Ann Lynch, an assistant solicitor to Bryan and daughter of his brother John Marcus.

And now, 114 years on, change is "in the air".

Earlier this year the firm teamed up with solicitors Hughes Murphy, based across the river at 13 Wellington Quay. "We've an opportunity to take the next door building and remain here," Bryan says, "or move further down the river."

But change has, in truth, been coming for some time. "Everything's speeded up. I remember the first photocopier in 1960; the manner in which business is transacted has speeded up greatly since then. My father would have had a much more relaxed lifestyle than I've had. The practise of law has hugely expanded since I qualified - human rights wasn't even named at that time.

"The main line of the practice through the years has been property. Probably our largest case was against the government when we struck down a land tax brought in by the Dick Spring government in 1976. Our most famous apprentice was the late government minister George Colley - his father had been a client."

Bryan Lynch, his two brothers and their families all live in Howth. "When you're born in paradise why would you live anywhere else?" he says. He's loved practising law but retirement, too, "is in the plans. I'd like to do it on a gradual three, two, one-day-a-week basis."