As mainstream media shies away from legal coverage, Joshua Rozenberg talks to Alex Aldridge about the 25 years under his belt that have made him the UK's best-known legal commentator

"I have had the misfortune to have been the last full-time, legally-qualified legal correspondent employed by both the BBC and The Daily Telegraph," wrote Joshua Rozenberg in his farewell article for Britain's biggest-selling broadsheet, published at the end of 2009. "There is now less coverage and analysis of law, politics and other demanding topics in the mainstream media than there was even a decade ago… none of the stories and commentaries I have published on www.telegraph.co.uk/law since September 2008 has appeared in print. This is the last of them: The Telegraph has terminated my contract."

Two years on, Rozenberg is conspicuously cheerier, but no less forthright, as he talks about a remarkable career that has seen him become Britain's best-known legal commentator. "As anyone who's gone freelance will tell you, you never look back," reflects the Polish tailor's son over eggs florentine at a cafe in Spitalfields market, on the edge of the City of London.

A big part of this newfound optimism relates to Rozenberg's enthusiastic engagement with the internet. The 60-year-old writes a high-profile legal blog for The Guardian and has resurrected his old Radio 4 show, Law in Action (these days given a substantial boost by its availability on BBC iPlayer), as well as most recently embraced Twitter. "My view about Twitter used to be the same as a distinguished QC I know, who asked me why he should be interested in hearing what Stephen Fry had for breakfast. But having signed up a couple of months ago, I am now hooked," he says.

Last month's extradition hearing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was a perfect opportunity for Rozenberg to hone his fledgling tweeting skills, as reports of such cases are privileged against libel and can be made without the risk of prejudicing a British jury. Drawing on his experience, he went beyond simple reporting of the case and added commentary to his tweets. For example, when Assange's lawyer claimed that Swedish prosecutors had leaked information to the press about the WikiLeaks founder, Rozenberg quipped that he had no sense of irony.

This sense of fun has informed much of his career. Indeed, it's what drew Rozenberg to journalism in the first place – with his instinct that hackery promised more scope for enjoyment than law prompting him to ditch a traineeship at Surrey law firm Dixon Ward to join the BBC's graduate training scheme.

"I was living in Hertfordshire at the time," he recalls, "because my wife [Melanie Phillips, the well-known Daily Mail columnist and author, who Rozenberg married in 1974] was a trainee journalist on the Hemel Hempstead Evening Post-Echo. We had some friends come round for dinner, one of whom happened to work for the BBC and happened to mention to Melanie this training scheme they had for journalists. She was quite happy where she was, but I thought it sounded rather fun."

A general journalist for 10 years, during which time his duties included writing news bulletins and producing a political radio programme, Rozenberg's big break came in 1985 when, with the miners' strike throwing up many legal issues, the BBC decided it wanted someone to report on law full time. The only qualified solicitor in the newsroom was a natural choice for the job.

"It was the classic journalism rule of being in the right place at the right time," he reflects. "As people battled to sequestrate Scargill's funds, suddenly everyone wanted to know what 'sequestrate' meant. And when the Official Solicitor stopped Scargill going to prison, everyone wanted to know about this figure who descended from the gods when someone was in trouble."

As Rozenberg reported each day on the unfolding events in the evening news, his face became familiar to millions. "Before, I'd worked mainly in radio, so people didn't know what I looked like. But quite quickly I found myself being recognised by taxi drivers," he remembers, adding that being well-known was, on balance, a useful tool in his job. "It often meant that people were more helpful towards me – for example, by making more of an effort to find me a seat in a crowded courtroom. In other instances, I think it made members of the legal profession and those involved in cases more likely to talk to me."

After 15 years as the BBC's legal correspondent – and 25 at the corporation in total – one summer evening in 2000 Rozenberg received a phone call at his home in Bloomsbury, central London. It was Charles Moore, then editor of The Daily Telegraph. Even in a household with dinner table conversations as interesting as those that doubtless take place between Rozenberg and his wife, a call from the editor of a national newspaper was a big deal. "It came from out of the blue," he remembers.

Terrence Shaw, The Telegraph's legal correspondent was leaving, explained Moore. Would Rozenberg be interested in replacing him? "My guiding principle in life, rather unoriginal as it is, has always been to try to take opportunities when they come along," explains Rozenberg. "Although I was very happy at the BBC, I'd always wanted to work in newspapers. The Telegraph was also offering me more money, alongside the opportunity to express my opinion – something I'd never been able to do at the BBC. Plus, the BBC was tending to retire correspondents in their early 50s, mainly for financial reasons, which was obviously a concern."

Having never written a newspaper story in his life, Rozenberg was delighted when his first story for The Telegraph, about former MI5 operative David Shayler coming back to face trial under the Official Secrets Act, made the front page. "I found I could do it, which was great," he recalls.

Rozenberg says the most memorable case he covered for The Telegraph was the trial of Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Stephen Richards, who in 2007 was tried – and acquitted – for indecent exposure, having allegedly flashed a woman on a commuter train. "It was very curious to see a Court of Appeal judge, who I know personally perfectly well, faced with an accusation like that in court," he says. "Part of what made it so interesting was trying to judge whether the main witness, the woman on the train, was telling the truth or not – a question we in the press seats were, in this instance, in just as good a position to assess as the court. Sometimes it's obvious that witnesses are lying, sometimes it's obvious they aren't, sometimes you just don't know."

The trial of the Lockerbie bombers in 2000-01 was fascinating for different reasons – the case remaining the only time the ordinary courts of one country have sat on the territory of a second country and tried people from a third country. "It was surreal," recalls Rozenberg. "This Scottish court trying these Libyans in the middle of a forest outside of Utrecht."

Similarly unique was the unsuccessful battle to extradite General Pinochet in 1998-99, which Rozenberg reported on while at the BBC. The case, on which Lord Hoffman sat, remains the only time the law lords have re-opened one of their decisions, after Hoffmann failed to declare his links with Amnesty International. "The twists and turns were absolutely extraordinary," recalls Rozenberg, who remembers the case as a "fun time, too", in part thanks to a voluntary secondary role he assumed as summariser-in-chief of the ins and outs of English legal proceedings to the Chilean journalists in attendance.

The disturbing Fred and Rosemary West Cromwell Street murder case of the mid-90s, which Rozenberg covered from start to finish, featured no such gaiety. "I remember telling my colleagues the evidence at the point before it could be formally reported. They went pale," he remembers, adding that in the end he found himself making the call of how much detail the corporation would provide in its accounts. "You don't censor material. But at the same time, you don't have to report every word of a case to every audience."

To get his head round the myriad of complex issues legal issues thrown up by these cases – and report them in a straightforward, easily understandable way – the contacts he has built up within the profession over the years have been crucial. "Despite the pressure journalists sometimes find themselves under to hype up stories, I think I have been able to maintain the respect of lawyers and judges. They may be a little suspicious of me, but they know they can trust me to use what they tell me in an unattributed way that can't be traced back to them," says Rozenberg, who was made an honorary bencher of Gray's Inn in 2003 and awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Hertfordshire in 1999.

While it's these individuals who he goes to first to help him understand a case, Rozenberg is no stranger to the primary and secondary legal texts used by practitioners. During the Lockerbie trial, for example, he had to rely on this material almost exclusively, with interaction between the lawyers and everyone else in court limited by the bulletproof screen separating them. "As I wasn't very familiar with Scots law, it would have been very helpful to have spoken to the lawyers during breaks in the hearings, but the security set-up of the court meant the only way to do so was by door-stepping them on their way in each morning," he says.

These days, Rozenberg's reading material also includes blogs written by practising lawyers at barristers' chambers and law firms. His favourites are 1 Crown Office Row's UK Human Rights Blog and the UK Supreme Court Blog jointly run by Olswang and Matrix Chambers – both of which not only provide reflections on academic legal theory, but are increasingly going some way to fill the gap left by the mainstream media's scaled-back legal coverage.

Indeed, at a recent hearing of a libel claim by His Holiness Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj against the journalist Hardeep Singh, which has major implications for British libel law, the main coverage was provided by bloggers, with no national newspaper journalists in attendance at all. "The newspapers don't provide the service they once did, so the law firms and chambers have moved in," says Rozenberg. "And we're seeing that it's not just journalists who can write, but some lawyers as well."

He predicts that in future journalists could end up writing for these blogs – a prophecy that recalls the early days of the British press in the 18th century when it grew out of an expanding printing industry supplying the barristers of the Inns of Court. "As the economy recovers and law firms have more money to spend on such things, I could see law firms bringing in in-house journalist-bloggers – although they might not be very happy with some of our opinions," says Rozenberg.

"However it would work," he continues, looking at his watch as he puts his flat cap on, "doing new things is always nice."

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Rozenberg on Rozenberg

On authoring four books:

Alongside working as a journalist, Joshua Rozenberg has managed to fit in writing four books: Privacy and the Press, about freedom of expression; Trial of Strength, which explored the tensions between ministers and judges under the last Conservative Government; The Search for Justice, an analysis of the law in the mid-1990s; and The Case for the Crown, covering the launch of the Crown Prosecution Service.

"The books complemented the day jobs," says Rozenberg. "They're all journalistic in style and so I was able to update them as the law developed. They were written during evenings, weekends and holidays. That said, I found I had less spare time at The Telegraph than I'd had at the BBC so Privacy and the Press was delivered a year late. Oxford University Press seemed neither concerned nor surprised." He is not writing anything at the moment, but is "open to offers".

On dinner table conversations with his wife, journalist Melanie Phillips:

"We certainly talk about current affairs and don't always agree," he says. "But we are both open to persuasion and I think our views have grown closer over the years. I respect her deep knowledge of social and political issues, while she values having someone around who keeps a close eye on law and lawyers."

On family:

Rozenberg is married to Phillips, with whom he has a son, 30, and a daughter, 28. All four of them were born at Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital, in West London. Rozenberg and Phillips now live in Bloomsbury, central London.

On hobbies:

Reading, writing and "wrestling with my computer".

On the most memorable cases covered:

2007 – trial of Sir Stephen Richards for indecent exposure

2000-01 – trial of the Lockerbie bombers

1998-99 – Unsuccessful battle to prosecute General Pinochet

1995 – The Cromwell Street murder case

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Joshua Rozenberg career timeline

1971: Graduates from Wadham College, Oxford University
1972: Commences articles at Dixon Ward Solicitors, based in Richmond, Surrey
1975: Joins the BBC journalism graduate training programme
1984: Launches Radio 4 programme 'Law in Action'
1985: Becomes the BBC's legal correspondent
2000: Appointed legal affairs editor at The Daily Telegraph
2009: Leaves The Telegraph to go freelance, relaunching 'Law in Action' and writing for The Guardian, Standpoint magazine, The Law Society Gazette and Law Business Review, while also appearing regularly on Sky News, the BBC and other networks.