The Lane family was well known in Wolverhampton, having lived there from the late 13th century onwards, if not before. Andrew Lane, Richard’s grandfather, was steward of the neighbouring manor of Tattenhall for the Crown and the owner of land in Wednesfield which Richard recovered after litigation begun at common law in the Trinity term of 1413. He also inherited property in Compton and the town of Wolverhampton itself, but again he was obliged to go to court to implement his title. It was probably as part of their marriage settlement that Lane and his wife, Katherine, were confirmed in possession of land and rents in Hilton, Essington, Shareshull and Little Saredon, Staffordshire, by John Ruycroft in September 1398.
Most of the surviving references to Lane’s career concern appearances in court, made both on his own account and through his involvement in the affairs of others. The likelihood that he was a lawyer is borne out by his long period of service on the Staffordshire bench and his three terms as escheator, although he is nowhere specifically described as a member of the legal profession. His longstanding connexion with John Swynnerton, his neighbour, began in 1404, when the latter appointed him an attorney for the conveyance of his manors of Hilton and Essington. These were later settled upon Lane as a feoffee-to-uses, which he remained for the next 18 years. In July 1406 he served on his first royal commission, and not long afterwards he stood bail for a local man who was being sued in the court of common pleas. At this time he was party to several other enfeoffments and collusive actions regarding property held by him in trust, and in February 1408 one of the canons of Wolverhampton engaged him as an attorney. Together with Sir Richard Vernon, his colleague on the Staffordshire bench, he appeared among the arbitrators chosen in March 1418 to settle a quarrel between the abbot of Burton-upon-Trent and Thomas Okeover.
By the time of his first entry into Parliament in May 1421, Lane had acquired a considerable amount of administrative experience as an escheator, royal commissioner and j.p. He had also become involved in a number of financial undertakings which later resulted in litigation: at Easter 1408, for example, he entered into recognizances of 40 marks, probably on behalf of John Hampton the elder of Stourton, whose feoffee he then was, and whose territorial interests he was subsequently called upon to protect at law. During the Hilary term of 1420 he himself was being sued for a debt of 100 marks which he and other Staffordshire landowners owed Thomas Blount II, and over which he faced arrest because of his refusal to appear in court. His relations with Blount cannot have deteriorated too badly, however, since the two men continued to act together with Henry Booth as trustees of the manor of Potlock in Derbyshire. In the following year the prior of Repton successfully recovered the manor from them at the local assizes, together with damages of £10. A somewhat litigious man, Lane used his own knowledge of the law to confound his adversaries: he brought at least two actions for debt, in 1415 and 1421 respectively, and in 1428 we find him suing a group of Wolverhampton men for conspiracy and fraud. Two years later he was again in court, this time in an attempt to recover the wardship and marriage of a young tenant.
Lane’s parliamentary career was over when Thomas Griffiths sold him the manor of Bentley in Staffordshire, together with the bailiwick of the adjacent park and farmland worth about £2 7s.6d. a year. The transaction took place in 1430, although it was not until 1433 that he received royal letters of pardon for acquiring the property without licence.