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Law Society Gazette and negative coverage of the legal profession

Law Society Gazette (main legal profession journal) continues its negative coverage...

It has been noticeable in recent weeks that the Gazette appears to want to come up with stories saying how awful the market is at the moment. The examples below are just a few of the recent stories that have been in the magazine.

1. An article on the number of interventions "soaring" in 2008.

2. An article with quotations from management consultants saying that firms cannot sell, others are folding and the property market is in collapse.

In neither story did the Gazette mention the numbers or give any evidence of the background to the information they had published. I think this is irresponsible journalism in the vein of the Daily Express and its Diana stories, and the Daily Mail and its prophecies of impending doom!

The interventions story mentioned a figure of 22 interventions in something like 2 months, which is not exactly armageddon! Apologies to the editor if I got the numbers wrong..

The management consultancy story was almost laughable - the Gazette had basically telephoned a couple of consultants who had obviously latched onto the general gist of the story and come up with anecdotes about how awful things were so that they would get published...

One of the anecdotes was regarding a firm not being able to give themselves away to someone else, and the consultant using this as an indication of the market, however in reality this happens all the time and is more to do with the indemnity issue with taking over a conveyancing operation etc on the high street than any market collapse.

Would be nice if journalists could actually report factual news, rather than manufacturing news to sell their journals or get them read...

The legal recruitment job market is directly affected by the news in the quality journals, and it would be nice if respected magazines like the Gazette could actually produce factual news rather than go on a mission to find it.. Partners read it, bolt all the hatches, and all of a sudden vacancies disappear..

Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk. He is also a business improvement consultant with Ten-Percent Business Improvement for law firms. Visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/businessimprovement.html for details.
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