Editor’s letter

I think it’s fair to say that we ‘media types’ – flashy or otherwise – get a fair amount of stick for our endeavours. Indeed, where professional image is concerned, we may be less popular even than the lawyer types it is my constant pleasure to write about. And one of the charges commonly levelled right across the journalistic spectrum is that of ‘hype’. Fear-mongering. Creating news rather than reporting it.

You may have spotted, moreover, that since summer 2007 we have had a new potential ‘crisis’ to add to the pile: the ‘credit crunch’ – bad news for pretty much everyone to some extent, and culminating, of course, in the past few weeks' 'global financial crisis'. Juicy headlines have flowed week after week, amid no little suggestion that the world will unnecessarily ‘talk itself into a recession’ if not careful: a self-fulfilling prophecy, or “Apocalypse Now,” as Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, recently commented wryly concerning certain treasury predictions.

But if this is the case, let's remember it is not just the papers and other media channels doing the talking. It was the governor of the Bank of England in the UK, Mervyn King, who, in mid-August, said it was “bound to be the case that there is the possibility of a quarter or two of negative growth” – the most commonly cited definition for the start of a recession.

And more recently, but still prior to all the big banking drama, it was Chancellor Alistair Darling – who really ought to know – that told the Guardian newspaper the economic crisis could be the worst for 60 years. Effectively saving the media a job, he said: “I think it is important that Government ministers, and particularly me as Chancellor, level with people.”

Not long after that, it was then the European Commission no less that predicted the UK – along with Germany and Spain – will officially tip into recession in 2008; gross domestic product (GDP) apparently set to shrink by 0.2 per cent apiece in the second two quarters of the year.

Law firms still talk confidently of counter-cyclical practices, such as restructuring and insolvency, as well as the general ability (and hopefully management skills) to reshuffle resources. Certainly, the recent misfortunes of Lehman and the like has left some of the large firms with plenty to be getting on with. Redundancy ‘periods of consultation’, meanwhile, are largely confined to the property departments that anyone could have predicted would be prime victims of the downturn.

Of course, law firms are never going to suffer the serious slumps of the housebuilders or the high street. Still, the latest quarterly legal sector survey (QLSS), courtesy of Deloitte & Touche, found first-quarter fee income growth in the UK’s top-100 law firms dropped from 15.1 per cent to 6.3 per cent in 2008. Associate partner Jeremy Black said this was “still impressive” in the circumstances, but added that even the top-10 law firms were only forecasting fee-income growth of an average eight per cent in the coming year.

And look who else is talking… in the past month both Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy have announced hefty and snazzy strategy reports – outlining key achivements to date and ambitions for the future. There is even an introductory interview with new senior partner David Morley on A&O’s website (although it is unclear who is asking the questions). It forms part of the wider (downloadable) – and very wide-ranging – ‘Sustainable performance: annual report 2008’.

Over in Canary Wharf, meanwhile, David Childs has followed Freshfields’ lead earlier this year and produced his firm’s first corporate responsibility report.

Perhaps a downturn is the perfect time for a spot of fresh strategic thinking – or, at least, articulation.

Richard Brent, Editor