Tony Angel and the cute teddy bear next to him greeted me as I found my new desk – a Legal Business cover from 2003 and a personal favourite, a brilliant dissection of Linklaters’ painful reinvention as metric-driven world-beater. I soon dug out other classics, including the 2009 Icarus-themed investigation into pre-collapse Halliwells and the crumpled Hammonds cigarette packet illustrating a 2005 piece on the national player’s strained finances.
These are just a few of the agenda-setting articles Legal Business has produced over the years, the kind of work that made me a reader for more than a decade. Ultimately, it’s a legacy that made me agree to leave my long-term home at Legal Week to come on board to lead the title and its sister publication The In-House Lawyer.
In doing so, I have been struck by the enormous goodwill from senior contacts towards Legal Business – the industry wants to see this publication at its best. But it’s fair to say that I haven’t come to maintain the status quo. We have a lot of changes planned and, in the months to come, we’ll be testing those ideas with senior lawyers to get your insight into how you want us to evolve. These changes won’t happen overnight or even in weeks. It takes time to build something worthwhile but I regard this as a long-term career commitment. The potential is huge.
As to what we are aiming for, the core of it is serious but engaging business reporting. I’ve never considered myself a legal journalist – I’m not sure what that is unless it’s someone who writes ‘poach’, ‘raid’ and ‘stellar’ too often. I have always tried to bring the basics of business reporting I learned in other fields to how I approach the profession.
More than that stance, I want Legal Business to be the strongest analytical title in the global legal industry, bar none. Achieving that is going to mean our journalists working hard to produce mature, authoritative reporting. It will at times mean being critical of individual firms and lawyers, but here is the crucial point: all criticism must be proportionate and constructive. The shrill, self-righteous tone that the legal media can still lapse into has no place here. We should be as ready to celebrate the profession for its many virtues as highlight its failings.
Being authoritative also doesn’t always have to mean wordy.
Long-form journalism remains core to what we do but we serve busy readers and we will increasingly be providing means for senior lawyers to find relevant articles in more digestible forms to support our longer reporting. We also intend to make some targeted investments, including making the title more relevant in the digital age. I hope what I’m outlining here strikes a chord with many readers. We’ll soon find out.
These are just a few of the agenda-setting articles Legal Business has produced over the years, the kind of work that made me a reader for more than a decade. Ultimately, it’s a legacy that made me agree to leave my long-term home at Legal Week to come on board to lead the title and its sister publication The In-House Lawyer.
In doing so, I have been struck by the enormous goodwill from senior contacts towards Legal Business – the industry wants to see this publication at its best. But it’s fair to say that I haven’t come to maintain the status quo. We have a lot of changes planned and, in the months to come, we’ll be testing those ideas with senior lawyers to get your insight into how you want us to evolve. These changes won’t happen overnight or even in weeks. It takes time to build something worthwhile but I regard this as a long-term career commitment. The potential is huge.
As to what we are aiming for, the core of it is serious but engaging business reporting. I’ve never considered myself a legal journalist – I’m not sure what that is unless it’s someone who writes ‘poach’, ‘raid’ and ‘stellar’ too often. I have always tried to bring the basics of business reporting I learned in other fields to how I approach the profession.
More than that stance, I want Legal Business to be the strongest analytical title in the global legal industry, bar none. Achieving that is going to mean our journalists working hard to produce mature, authoritative reporting. It will at times mean being critical of individual firms and lawyers, but here is the crucial point: all criticism must be proportionate and constructive. The shrill, self-righteous tone that the legal media can still lapse into has no place here. We should be as ready to celebrate the profession for its many virtues as highlight its failings.
Being authoritative also doesn’t
always have
to mean wordy.
Long-form journalism remains core to what we do but we serve busy readers and we will increasingly be providing means for senior lawyers to find relevant articles in more digestible forms to support our longer reporting. We also intend to make some targeted investments, including making the title more relevant in the digital age. I hope what I’m outlining here strikes a chord with many readers. We’ll soon find out.