You know you're on dodgy territory when journalists and lobbying groups start to claim a piece of legislation is badly drafted. Unless you're a trained lawyer – and one with a specialism in the area at that – it's pretty difficult to tell if statute is poorly written.

Of course, as can been seen from this week's analysis, this didn't stop a storm of criticism hitting the Bribery Act, which must now surely rank as the most politically-charged piece of legislation to impact on corporates since the Human Rights Act of 1998.

In part, the nature of these attacks was due to the content of the Act. Supporting bribery is a hard public position to adopt – which forced opponents of the Act to get into technical arguments regarding supposed deficiencies in drafting.

These arguments rather ignore the fact that the Act has generally been welcomed by lawyers, including many general counsel, who feel the UK needed to update its anti-bribery laws, albeit with some concerns about lack of clarity regarding its scope.

Is there any self-interest in there from lawyers? Of course – there's no doubt the Bribery Act is the latest in a string of legislative incentives for City law firms to beef up their white-collar crime and regulatory practices, following a dynamic already well established in the US.

Many critics also attack the Act on policy grounds, arguing that it goes further than other countries and will be a disadvantage to British business. There is something to this, given the scope of the Act, though the far tougher enforcement tactics coming from US prosecutors for bribery offences surely mean the UK is unlikely to be taking a harder line.

But when substantive arguments wouldn't cut it, some were happy to pull out the trusty sword of exaggeration, triggering some laughable headlines about corporate hospitality and the Act supposedly banning client schmoozing at sporting events. (The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) guidance on the Act heroically asserts: "Rest assured – no-one wants to stop firms getting to know their clients by taking them to events like Wimbledon or the Grand Prix".)

The MoJ under the incoming coalition Government also rather played to the rabble-rousing, giving it a chance to score points off a statute pushed through by Labour while being seen as business-friendly. As such, the guidance on the Act published in March has achieved the ambiguous result of on one hand being regarded as an accessible, common-sense reading of the law while, on the other, in places skirting rather close to retroactively rewriting it. In seeking to downplay the Act's range, there is a danger that the MoJ has undersold what many will have to do to comply.

But quibbles aside, the biggest irony about the Act is that in public policy terms it has already been incredibly successful, triggering a huge overhaul of corporate behaviour and policy even before coming into force. And, despite brickbats, there are not many statutes you can say that about.