Perhaps this is age or the impact of web interactivity, but I’ve been thinking a lot about trust recently. Partly, I suppose it is linked with our parent company’s acquisition of American Lawyer Media, which does some excellent in-depth journalism but has some cultural differences with the news-driven Legal Week. But most importantly, it strikes me that the trust between the legal media and law firms is in short supply; one managing partner recently told me that half his partnership regard him talking to the legal press as supping with the devil.
Deserved? Not entirely. One reason for such sensitivities is that City law firms so rarely hit the radar of the general business press, so supposed sensationalism is sometimes just the cut-and-thrust of media, which law firms are still getting used to. I can think of two memorable occasions in which magic circle firms were utterly shocked over the rough-and-ready treatment they received from some highly respected broadsheets when the firm turned from pundit on the sidelines to the main meat of the story. In the former case there was some justification, even if the paper’s treatment of the story got a little hyper-ventilated. In the latter, it was a straight hack job and I do not think I’m exaggerating to say the firm in question was grateful for the measured handling of the story by Legal Week.
