Over a decade and a bit, irreverent legal website RollOnFriday has given City associates a voice and become respectable – almost. Suzanna Ring and Alex Novarese report

The familiar voice at the end of the phone line directed the veteran PR at a leading global law firm to a website distinguished by a strange mix of heavy-handed erotic imagery and philosophical musings. "I can't be looking at this at work," replied the slightly rattled comms professional – only to be told that the author of the site was a lawyer in his employer's Moscow office. The PR man's years of experience kicked in as he rapidly assessed the situation: "Oh fuck!"

The above episode, of several years' vintage now, is just one of a rich collection of colourful incidents that have helped make the name of the website that went from curiosity, to irritant, to eventually earn an almost affectionate place in the City legal community.

Whether it is outing leather trouser-wearing Linklaters partners, chronicling the unforgettable literary career of Deidre Dare or illustrating a law firm's insolvency with a picture from mawkish US teen drama Dawson's Creek, RollOnFriday (RoF) has carved out a large audience since its launch more than 11 years ago.

The RoF formula – which mixes news with social networking and irreverent wit – helped to bring a voice to City associates and aspiring lawyers but also to usher in a new transparency to a secretive industry. The site has also displayed a staying power that has eluded some far larger online contemporaries, and has helped build a monthly audience of around 125,000.

Piers Warburton, one of its two founders, accurately describes the sensibility that has allowed the site to establish itself without having every door in the City shut in its face. "We ask: is it fun and is it relevant to the profession as a whole? If it's a story that is just personal, that doesn't have a bearing on the law, that isn't fun, then it doesn't have a place on RollOnFriday."

matthew-rhodes-rollonfriday-2Warburton's partner in crime, the established face of RoF, Matthew Rhodes (pictured), puts it more succinctly: "We're consistent."

Talking about Fight Club

Born amid the original dotcom boom, RoF had suitably humble beginnings in a shared office with an Israeli hat maker and one phone line.

The website itself wasn't entirely new as a concept. The widely-read Greedy Associates message boards in the US had had a huge impact in rapidly spreading information throughout the American legal industry in the late 1990s, with a particular focus on what associates were being paid.

Indeed, so great was its influence that it played a not inconsiderable role in stoking a transatlantic pay war in 2000 and 2001 that rapidly transmitted associate pay hikes in California's booming tech market to New York and then London.

Yet there was no equivalent in the UK, a gap that Rhodes and Warburton as two young associates at Ashurst thought they could fill. In part this idea represented an escape from legal practice for Rhodes, who had joined Ashurst along with Warburton as a trainee in 1996 but knew that the law wasn't for him, despite a family connection through his father, barrister Robert Rhodes QC.

"I liked Ashurst very much but was looking to get away from being a solicitor. I rather fell into the law: I read archaeology and anthropology at university and you can't do much with that. Being a lawyer was a good way to get someone to pay for you to be a student for another two years, get an excellent commercial training and a qualification that your mother likes," says Rhodes.

However, while Rhodes had not recognised his calling in the City, he and Warburton had noticed that they shared an interest with their peers in law firm gossip – particularly relating to salaries and how associates were treated.

"Salaries were the hot topic. It was big news for us and people in our position, and everybody wanted more information. But it was a shocking concept back then that somebody would see what law firms actually paid people. They were like those secret clubs – almost like Fight Club – everything within these four walls. We saw an opportunity to change that," says Warburton.

The pair approached Ashurst's management, who were "pretty cool about it". Rhodes handed in his resignation and Warburton was given the opportunity to continue at the firm with certain guidelines in place. (Warburton, a corporate lawyer who specialises in funds work, remains at Ashurst, going on to make partner in 2007. He acts on the business development side for RoF, with Rhodes focusing on the editorial and operational decisions.)

The plan was to provide access to information on everything a City associate would want to know, giving birth to RoF's slogan, still in place today: "News, views and gossip on law firms (including what they pay)". The site went live on 5 October 2000, only three months after Rhodes quit Ashurst.

The duo aimed to create a buzz around the project that would limit the need for marketing and contain costs – a marked contrast to the dotcom mania of the time that saw many sites spend huge sums to chase an online audience before they had a business model. "Dotcom companies used to talk about the cash-burn phase – we thought that was crazy," recalls Warburton.

But spotting the gap in the market was not a straight route to success and, by the end of the first year, the business was "flatlined down with £100 to spare". "It was touch and go at first – we needed revenue," says Warburton. And there was a more fundamental problem: the original incarnation of RoF wasn't very good. The site's design was basic and looked static, even for the times. And in the initial stages, before RoF had built a wide base of readers that could send in tips, it was largely reworking pieces from the legal press and general news sources.

An early attempt to set up discussion boards had to be abandoned because the site didn't yet have enough traffic to support it (this was well before social media went mainstream).

rollonfridayMeanwhile, large law firms – a breed that has never found a trend it wanted to be at the front of – generally didn't know what to make of it all. Rhodes recalls: "[The initial response was] mixed. Firms that you would expect – because they were doing well or had happy staff – were in favour of it. Some firms that were having a rougher time of it were not. The majority didn't really know what we were and just ignored it and waited to see what would happen."

Going viral

With the site struggling to find its audience and tone, there were to be a string of stories emerging that proved tailor-made for RoF's irreverent style and sense of invention.

The most helpfully timed was the extraordinary media scrum created when an email exchange containing some fairly innocuous sexual references involving a junior associate at Norton Rose went viral in December 2000. Going viral in the days when email was still relatively new technology meant the email being forwarded to an estimated 10 million people worldwide and a national newspaper camped outside the door of the associate's former girlfriend. Meanwhile, a bewildered Norton Rose was left blinking in the spotlight of an utterly unexpected international story.

"We had a couple of viral stories that really put RollOnFriday on the map – the notorious email that was sent by a Norton Rose lawyer being one. We thought Norton Rose's reaction sounded unfair, so we launched a campaign to save the job of the lawyer in question. That kickstarted the user numbers and gave us the momentum we needed," says Warburton.

There would be other weird and memorable stories chronicled in RoF's early years – including a hilariously melodramatic email exchange at Baker & McKenzie involving ketchup and dry cleaning, which became widely covered in the national press, and a bizarre incident involving Hammonds' Birmingham office and women's shoes.

The Norton Rose campaign also initiated a trend for the site launching comedic campaigns around legal stories – often involving law firms making crass or mean-spirited decisions.

This didn't immediately revive RoF – the site probably didn't hit its stride until two or three years after its launch – but it was the beginning of the community spirit that the site would build into its strongest asset.

One such campaign involved asking readers to send regional firm Gavin Edmondson Solicitors stationery to make a point about the fact that it was taking on unpaid paralegals and therefore must be too poor to afford resources. "I got a call from the police. They said: 'You're harassing them.' I said: 'They're just Post-it notes'," recalls Rhodes.

The expansion of RoF's community would also greatly improve the quality of the original stories on the site delivered every Friday morning thanks to regular tips from readers. Over the years the site has broken a very respectable clutch of business stories affecting City law, including last year unveiling the news of the impending sale of the College of Law.

A second attempt to foster discussion boards proved far more successful, with RoF quickly building up a hardcore group of devoted readers, some of whom seemingly live on the site. The discussion threads mix trivia, angst, humour, nonsense and boasting, collectively forming a caustically frank view of life at the legal coalface. The boards were also to prove a useful counterpoint to the staggeringly bland student recruitment material produced by most law firms, apparently staffed by the part-time Benetton models. (Managing the more enthusiastic and obsessive posters on discussion threads has also has given RoF a rich collection of war stories.)

So integrated is the network, that it has spawned a number of marriages. "We've had seven weddings and four babies out of our discussion board. We initially offered to pay for the first wedding but when they said it was at Claridges we changed our minds. We also offered to pay the first couple that had a baby £1,000 if they named it Matthew or Piers. They didn't."

If the magic of online communities was RoF's unexpected saviour – it was originally conceived more as a news resource – one key ingredient of the site from the start was humour, with a dry wit carefully counter-balancing its regular forays into schoolyard humour.

In particular, the much celebrated Glamorous Solicitor – which features an eccentrically or flamboyantly styled solicitor every week – helped build up an audience before RoF had yet found its news legs.

Getting respectable

The site's irreverent humour and strong advocacy for its core associate readership has meant that it has inevitably antagonised law firms at various points over the years. Law schools have also come in for a particularly harsh drubbing over the years. "They take on too many people. The line that 80% of students get a job in law is completely disingenuous," says Rhodes.

Rhodes says that he has no regrets over the site's handling of any stories over the years – not an assertion that many traditional journalists would make. Perhaps this reflects the occasionally combative and stubborn streak in Rhodes' personality – his well-renowned charm has not been enough to stop him getting into the occasional scrap.

However, RoF has generally been able to push the boundaries because, aside from its wit, it generally writes with a real knowledge and affection for the legal industry.

"There's a lot RollOnFriday doesn't publish. When something comes in, the approach is to step back and ask: 'What are we trying to achieve?' RollOnFriday works and is successful because it serves a useful purpose," says Warburton.

He adds: "We've never been sued. We've had discussions with people and received the odd letter, but we're very careful."

Indeed, a guiding principle behind the site is that increased transparency is a good thing for the profession. It is a stance that has gradually gained it friends among the senior end of the profession.

One senior partner at a UK top 40 firm says: "They do a pretty good job. They have a very good network and they do what they do in a pretty responsible way.

"When you think of the scope they have to report a lot of scandalous things, they strike a good balance between representing the interests of their readers while upholding some sensible values."

Slaughter and May executive partner Graham White comments: "It's often extremely clever and funny – and obviously if they're not poking fun at us, it's great. Overall, I think they get the balance about right, although there have been occasions where I think they've gone slightly too far.

"They're not purporting to do the job that Legal Week and The Lawyer do, but it's nice to have something a touch irreverent on a Friday. It's a bit like a legal Private Eye. I think people get less het up about it than they used to, and if they have a pop at you, people are now more likely than they were merely to grind their teeth and shrug."

RoF's support for the industry has also been underlined by several ventures where it has tried to back struggling junior lawyers or good causes. Most notably, the site in 2009 helped to broker a deal that deployed redundant City lawyers on pro bono work after RoF was approached with the idea by a laid-off Clifford Chance associate. As part of the initiative, which was backed by charity LawWorks, 15 law firms agreed to give guaranteed job interviews to associates who took on pro bono work. (Rhodes was awarded an OBE in 2011 in recognition of his support for pro bono.)

The extent to which RoF has become a part of the City legal community is underlined several weeks after the interview for this article as Rhodes bumps into Legal Week again over lunch with a magic circle senior partner, who greets Rhodes warmly.

As Rhodes puts it: "We are representing the profession. We are massively in favour of it."

Becoming established has seen RoF move to smarter surroundings in Victoria Embankment and the site now has two full-time reporters – Frank Webster and Laura Paddison – former associates respectively from Jones Day/Kirkland & Ellis and legacy Lovells/Latham & Watkins.

piers-warburton-rollonfridayRecent years have also seen the site expand into providing detailed profiles of law firms, blogs, job listings and a mid-week mail-out.

Friday franchise?

If RoF has become part of the legal scene, there will be much attention on how it develops in future. Attempts to try the model with other less gossipy trades have previously faltered.

"We have looked at other options and dabbled with the accounting profession but it turned out there was little of interest to write about and very little anyone would find funny," says Warburton (pictured).

Instead, RoF has focused on expanding internationally, putting considerable efforts into its Asia-Pacific coverage.

RoF has an interesting challenge in that it now has to compete with so many more online resources. Not only has blogging taken off in law, the general rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter means there are many more places in which RoF's core readership can choose to rant about the lot of a City associate.

There has also been a rash of sites attempting to offer a similar formula to RoF, so far without much success. (The notable international exception has been the online news site Above The Law, which has displaced the Greedy Associates and has built a huge US audience).

"Every year there would be two or three new sites that tried to compete with us, but they never really managed. Consistency is the key. Right from the start we had a concept that we thought worked – it's simple and we've kept it simple," says Rhodes.

RoF now boasts Asia-Pacific, Europe and US news pages, and profiles for the large Australian firms in addition to polls ranking them. And while Rhodes and Warburton say they have no current plans to open an office in Australia, a hub in Sydney would be a viable option. Aside from expansion, RoF plans to campaign more on diversity issues within the law.

In essence, however, RoF looks set to stick close to the formula that has worked for the past 11 years, avoiding a major move into providing real-time content or the more blog-driven formula that has been developed by others. And why not? The site has played its part in making the law a more transparent and liberal business.

As Warburton reflects: "If [we have] encouraged law firms to think about things and about how they treat people, that's a good thing. The legal profession is very different to what it was 10-15 years ago, and we're proud to have been even a small part of that."

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Phew, what a scorcher – some recent RollOnFriday favourites

The firm's management asked its associates to raise their game at the start of last year and record just four chargeable hours a day. RoF reported that the firm's board had given a gloomy presentation to all staff stating that salaries were frozen, again. Bonuses were axed. And staff were warned that redundancies might be in the offing. The site commented: "Clearly whilst it's jolly agreeable to be able to refer to one's client as 'your majesty' it doesn't necessarily pay the bills."

This story involved an email forwarded to RollOnFriday (RoF) over "numerous complaints about the way [Allen & Overy] female trainees have been dressing around the office". The email accused female trainees of looking more like they were going clubbing than to the office and also of failing to brush their hair. RoF added: "Trainees say that the complaints were apparently made by some of the firm's senior partners, presumably on the grounds that they have an issue with anyone who still has their own teeth, hair and a functioning sex life."

Linklaters partner Ralph Wollburg is outed for alleged tax evasion over an expensive blouse and some sort of leather trousering described by the German press as "Lederhose". A customs officer told Wollburg that he was obliged to pay tax on the goods, to which he allegedly replied that he'd already paid the tax in the US, apparently adding: "Do you know who I am? I am one of the leading business lawyers in Germany."

RoF reported that police had been called to a pub near Berwin Leighton Paisner's (BLP's) London office last summer when two lawyers from the firm got into a punch up. The story stated: "Andrew Bamber, a senior partner from BLP's banking department, had gone to the boozer for a few post-work jars with one of his junior associates. But the friendly drink soon degenerated into a brawl."

An unusual one – even for RoF. The site reported that a man had been jailed for three months after trying to turn his bodily waste into gold and burning down his flat in the process. Paul Moran, from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, decided that the solution to his financial problems lay in voiding his bowels onto an electric heater. His Honour Judge McFarland told Moran: "It was an interesting experiment to fulfil the alchemist's dream, but wasn't going to succeed."