Much has changed in the profession since Lawyers Weekly published its first issue on 9 June 2000, but then plenty of things have stayed the same. Angela Priestley looks back over those early years

In the year 2000 a small team of individuals set about creating a new business publication. It was an ambitious move in which they planned to target the legal profession on a weekly basis. Their mission would not be online (the dotcom crash had spectacularly crushed such ideas) but rather in print, building a brand commercially from display advertising - provided by the recruitment market - and sending it weekly to as many Australian lawyers as possible.

Thus, Lawyers Weekly was born. In the ten years and 499 issues that have followed, the publication has chronicled some of the dramatic shifts in the legal profession and in the wider community at large. But through it all, Lawyers Weekly has stayed loyal to its original ambitions in that it brings the legal news to mailboxes of lawyers everywhere.

The early years

There are numerous stories, opinions pieces and features from those early years that with the benefit of hindsight may indeed seem a little strange. But where better to explore than the stories carried in issue one?

The date was Friday 9 June 2000, the editor George Walmsley and the publisher the now defunct THC Press (later purchased by LexisNexis).

Walmsley's mantra at the time was that lawyers read enough formal material as a matter of necessity and that "we're going to investigate and report with a lighter heart and even a sense of humour".

For ten years, Lawyers Weekly has persevered with this mantra but has more recently made some new additions. Today, the publication also seeks to report on the best of the legal profession - the unique stories, the personalities and the firms that strive to do things a little differently. Despite this, the publication continues to offer readers information on their industry, as well as their careers - by presenting a detailed analysis of the legal job market, the lurking job opportunities, career advancement and learning and development.

As for the lead story in issue one, that privilege went to Allens Arthur Robinson which, at the time, topped the worldwide league table of law firms ranked by number of privatisation deals completed in 1999. For Allens, it was 23 deals all up, culminating to a total value of US$17,079 million - according to Thomson Financial Securities Data. Australian law firms performed well on that particular table with Robert Nicholson, then of Freehills, putting it down to the body of privatisation work available in Australia.

From that first issue it was clear that the GST was the talk of business and legal services in 2000. A survey by the Law Society of NSW at the time found that many of the country's largest law firms were spending more than $1 million on their systems, training and/or implementations to ensure they were prepared for the GST transition come 1 July.

Meanwhile, the partners at Clayton Utz had just voted to adopt an integrated national partnership from July that year, Deacons were preparing to merge with Dunhills and did you know Clayton Utz played a cameo role in the film, Looking for Alibrandi? (The main character, Josie, meets her father for the first time when he joins the Clayton Utz Sydney office).

If you thought the deluge of new technology like social media, iPads, iphone, blackberries etc is difficult to keep abreast of today, then think back to the simpler, hardcopy days of 2000. Back then, a survey by online legal information service, Lawform, found that 50 per cent of law firms were still not hooked up to the internet and that many lawyers over the age of 40 had never really used PCs. "Many lawyers are concerned that just by clicking on to the Internet there will be a breach of security," said John Henshaw at the time. Sydney sole practitioner Adam Darke commented: "I've been too busy to open my email. Maybe it is something I'll use in the future - it's like that trip to New York - maybe one day."

But the stories that really rallied readers were remarkably similar to those of today - particularly the potential arrival of UK Magic Circle firms on our shores. The on again off again merger rumours between Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Clifford Chance were on the table back in 2000 with both firms, just like today, remaining coy about the subject and refusing to be drawn on just what was/is going on. Then there were the rumours that the Mallesons partnership had approved a merger with Linklaters.

Just like today, those early editions of Lawyers Weekly offered some advisory pieces for best business practice. One such piece provided a detailed analysis on why law firms should have an email policy, while another addressed the HR function and shared how law firms were planning to handle the potential disruptions of the Sydney Olympics, with one firm stating "we'd rather have staff watch events at the office than go downtown - and perhaps not come back".

And we loved the walk down memory lane of some of the law firm websites. Freehills was, at the time, angering one Lawyers Weekly reporter with its overly colourful website, Blake Dawson Waldron was being all futuristic and using the flash plug-in, consequently delivering a "flashy" look in the process, while Phillips Fox thought a series of cute cartoons was the way to attract an audience online.

Stability takes a turn

Those early years of Lawyers Weekly were a period of rapid growth for the Australian legal sector. It was a time when globalisation accelerated, Australian firms were putting themselves well and truly on the worldwide legal service map and technology was just starting to change the game. It was a time when, outside the business community, the world was still enjoying the relative peace and stability of the 1990s, all eyes were on Sydney for the Olympic Games, and the talk of the political town was John Howard's GST.

Then 9/11 hit. And it hit the global legal community hard. At the time, Lawyers Weekly counted 29 law firms and legal departments with offices in the World Trade Centre. Minter Ellison's New York office was not affected, but the legal arms of PwC and KPMG suffered casualties. Meanwhile, US lawyer Stanley Chesley, also known as the "master of disaster" was preparing to launch a class-action case against the airlines whose planes were hijacked. Around 14,000 lawyers were directly affected by the attacks, according to a spokesperson at the New York State Bar, while legal businesses suffered a significant loss of hardcopy documents.

What followed was a downturn. But while Australia was doomed to succumb to a recession like the rest of the world, law firms declared in Lawyers Weekly that they were actively recruiting and sheltered against the economic dip. But in a similar vein to the Global Financial Crisis, the prosperity of the legal market dried up with employment prospects in the legal sector plummeting to record lows according to the TMP Worldwide Job Index.

Job cuts swiftly occurred. Redundancies crept from the UK and the US to Asia, and then to PwC Legal, which was forced to cut a significant portion of its staff and question its links to the accounting firm, leaving it particularly vulnerable. Later, reports from the TMP Worldwide Job Index revealed that many firms used the economic downturn of late 2001 to "performance manage" staff.

Meanwhile, the talk of those early Lawyers Weekly years was the rise of the fully-fledged multidisciplinary practices (MDPs) combining legal, consulting and accounting services. Of course, many of these spectacularly failed, with plenty of names that floated through the pages of those early editions of Lawyers Weekly no longer existing - or existing in extremely different forms.

While the 2010 Federal Election generated plenty of excitement about the number of lawyers successfully making a go of politics, Lawyers Weekly research back in 2001 found that at least half of Australia's then serving MPs and senators held a legal qualification of some sort. In 2001, a then fresh faced ALP senate candidate, Penny Wong, suggested one reason why lawyers might move to politics; "maybe they just get bored with the law - I mean, billing every six minutes and things like that," before noting the consonance between the two professions.

By 2002, the talent war was picking up again and law firms declared that they would strive to rebuild their practices.

Talks of a move to a national profession were also occurring, following an 8 March 2002 resolution passed by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to begin formal preparations for a uniform national profession. Human rights were also being explored, especially with an ACT Bill of Rights at the time up for discussion.

And if you thought Clayton Utz faced it tough with Allen & Overy's arrival earlier this year, think back to 2002, when the firm was facing fallout from its role in the BATAS document-shredding scandal.

Then there was the Kirby Affair. The complaint made against Justice Michael Kirby in 2002 does not warrant mentioning in this piece, but needless to say his character truly shone through during the debacle, with the High Court judge emerging with admiration and respect, as could be seen from his gracious acceptance of Senator Heffernan's apology.

Exploring the profession ten years ago may present an indication of just how it's changed and perhaps what it has learned during the past decade. But sadly, issues like depression in law, a shortage of rural, regional and remote lawyers, gender imbalance and the difficulties surrounding flexible legal work were still as prevalent in the early days of Lawyers Weekly as they are today. It seems that despite numerous reports, surveys and research into such issues - including plenty of calls from significant legal voices regarding their existence - the last ten years has seen little achievement in combating such challenges.

Perhaps, however, publications like Lawyers Weekly have given a little more voice to such concerns and thrown the spotlight upon them. In the future, we hope that spotlight can effect some more resounding change.

More reflections on a decade of legal news:

>> Once upon a billable hour: the legal world in 2000

>> From the vault: a slideshow of ten years of legal news

>> Related coverage: Looking back at 500 issues of Lawyers Weekly

>> Then & Now: The legal industry in 2000 - crunching the numbers

>> Then & Now: Turning the page on law firm website design