Re-release: The Spectator Sport of Legal Journalism in the UK

John Quinn (0:03)

This is John Quinn, and this is Law, Disrupted. And today, we're going to turn the tables on some journalists.

We're going to put the journalists on the hot seat. Two journalists from the well-known legal publication in London. The Lawyer, we have Catrin, known as Cat, Griffiths, who's the editor-in-chief of The Lawyer, and Christian Smith, who's the litigation editor. Thanks so much for talking to us and being willing to be on the receiving end of questions.

Catrin Griffiths (0:37)

Thank you. Thank you for having us on.

John Quinn (0:40)

I'm used to be interviewing by you and the likes of you, and you're used to doing the interviewing. But maybe this is a bit of a change of pace to talk to you about your work.

Christian Smith (0:54)

It's not comfortable.

Catrin Griffiths (0:55)

It's not. It's really not comfortable. It's only just started. It's only just started.

John Quinn (1:02)

You have no idea. But so look, I've been going to London, and we opened our office in London in 2007

We went over there looking around, trying to figure out. You all speak language and you use words like common law and trials and things like that. We thought, we can pick this up. It took me several years to realize I didn't have a clue. The legal culture is so different. But one of the things that's different about the legal culture in the UK and in London, is that there is a legal press that covers the profession and the business of law very closely, in a way that it's not covered in the US, I think. I'd be interested in hearing your views on that. It's like a law practice, big law practice in London is like a spectator sport, and you have these publications and columnists who are, oh, this firm was doing this, and this firm seems to have followed this strategy, and that turned out to be completely misguided.

This firm is really on the uptick here, we're expecting great things from them. Coverage that you just really wouldn't see like that, in the US, I don't think. So, Cat, what's your reaction to those observations?

Catrin Griffiths (2:29)

Absolutely right. And, I mean, I could put a historical gloss on it and say, there's a sort of 18th century new Grub Street kind of tradition with print publications where it's quite knockabout. But I think journalism in the UK is pretty saber-toothed in many ways. Not just tabloid journalism, by the way, but sort of broadsheet journalism. And I think that that's part of a general questioning culture.

And also the other thing, John, of course, is that the UK is very small geographically and everything is highly centralised in London. So actually, you can get to know the sort of the guiding lights, if you like, of say the law or if you're covering another sector, really quickly, whereas you in the States, it's a little bit different. Obviously, you have the huge centres and they're really important, but it's not as perhaps as as personal because the UK is small, but it seems like you're saying very, very concentrated with a with a sort of high rate of sort of exchange and so on, sort of whether it's conversational or transactional or what have you. So I think that's that's sort of one of the main reasons. I mean, the lawyers started in the 80s as part of a sort of a general print boom. And it was for a long time a weekly magazine with recruitment ads at the back. And this was a very classic business publishing strategy.

But then over time, what we've done is clearly, as I'm sure you know, we've gone digital. We are much more an information business now. We have tons of data that we work with. And we're much more of a news and information and sort of an insight business. It doesn't mean that we don't like the big stories, and it doesn't mean we don't like the big headlines. But we try now to temper it probably with a bit more insight and more data that really bolsters, I think, the argument that we're trying to run in a particular piece.

John Quinn (4:27)

So would you say that British journalism is different than in the US? And would you say that the legal journalism and the interest and the focus on events at law firms and transit law firms and the like is just a manifestation in one service industry of kind of the different character of British journalism? Christian, does that seem right to you?

Christian Smith (4:53)

Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good way of putting it. I mean, from our perspective, as Cat sort of said there, we see ourselves as business journalists or financial journalists that cover the legal sector. So you might pick us up and put us in the Financial Times or The Times or The Guardian or The New York Times or The Washington Post. And we just might be the legal correspondent for there. But we just extrapolate that out into an entire, I was going to say magazine, but really website we are now.