Is the legal press too negative? I had that theory expounded to me at length by a managing partner recently over a few too many drinks.

We have made increasing efforts at Legal Week in recent years to stamp out a knee-jerk critical tone that it is easy for journalists to default to in favour of what I hope is a more constructive stance. But it is a difficult balance to get right. It doesn't help that the profession isn't the most charitable of places. It's not an industry in which senior lawyers tend to find much constructive to say about rivals, and reader comments on legalweek.com can certainly tilt towards the downright cynical.

Still, I think the managing partner had a point. The press is widely read within the legal goldfish bowl and so has a certain measure of influence. As such, it should fall on titles like Legal Week to think very carefully before dishing out criticism.

There is also the issue of whether the value judgements the press is making are consistent, let alone well-argued. I've often heard partners argue that they are damned if they do, damned if they don't with regards to performance measures like profits per equity partner. If they don't get profits up they come in for media criticism for falling behind peers, at which point firms are often told to take a more robust line on performance. Yet once firms undertake potentially unpopular steps to improve financial performance, they frequently get stick for – surprise, surprise – being too ruthless.

One nuanced point that I don't think has been reflected in the debate on morality regarding job cuts is that a law firm's 'share price' and capital base is directly tied to its partnership. This is a key reason why firms move to protect profitability – if partner profits drop too far and too many partners start leaving, firms can get into trouble very, very quickly, as Halliwells' experience at the extreme end of the spectrum illustrates.

That's not a justification for firms to crassly fire half their staff – just a reflection that the issues are more complicated than the media sometimes allows. Neither would I suggest that journalists refrain from constructive criticisms. To be fair, increasingly I find that law firms are very grown up about criticism providing that the arguments are reasonable, clearly presented to the subject before publication and that they have a chance to get their point of view across.

The bottom line is that, for all its foibles and shortcomings, there is much to celebrate in the legal profession (and I say that as someone who has had plenty of chances to see the less flattering side of the industry). In future, we will have to redouble our efforts to make sure we reflect that.

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