The Legal IT Insider team are hosting a drinks reception to celebrate the 300th issue of the Orange Rag.
We have reserved the whole of Dirty Martinis, if you would like to attend please RSVP to [email protected]
Date – Tuesday 14th March
Timing – 5pm-Midnight
Venue – Dirty Martinis, Monument – 1 Lovat Lane, London, EC3R 8DT, just up from Lower Thames Street
Theme – Networking and Open Bar (until we blow the budget!)
Below are some key facts about the 300 issues of the Orange Rag:
Charles Christian has been involved with all 300 issues of the Insider since its launch in October 1995 – and just in case you were wondering about the math, back in the early pre-internet days, when the Insider was a subscription-based print only publication, it used to be published on a fortnightly basis.
Caroline Hill, the new kid on the block, has been involved on the editorial side since issue 276 in September 2014 and as head honcho since 287 in October 2015. Jeremy Hill has looked after the commercial side since 2011 although it seems much longer and he’s only been threatened with being fired/terminated with extreme prejudice about, on average, once every 6 weeks.
The nickname The Orange Rag stems from the fact that the original version was printed on orange paper to stop law firms and tech vendors running off unlicensed copies on their photocopiers.
Highlights and lowlights include being phoned up by the editor of a shiny legal magazine shortly after we launched to ask, in all seriousness: “Who gave you (ie Charles Christian) permission to publish the Insider as it was going to hurt his advertising revenue?” It did and he was fired.
We were threatened with libel action by the senior partner of a large law firm for running a review of his firm’s website in which we criticised the fact it used so much Flash (just Google it) that it was unusable. It was and three months later the firm hired fresh website developers to produce a non-Flash version. This didn’t stop the firm from subsequently collapsing.
We were also threatened with libel by a tech vendor for running a story saying their principle reseller (Tikit since you ask) had dropped them in favour of a rival product. Turns out Tikit had told us they’d dropped the company but had forgotten to notify them in person, so they read it first in the Insider!
And then there was the law firm marketing apparatchik who was most miffed when we refused to reprint their press release verbatim but instead added our own comment based upon independently researched material. “Well,” he squeaked, “we can’t make you retract the story but we can insist you never use our logo ever again!”
As we gear up for our next 300 issues, we will continue to be the go-to source for industry news and comment, you will read it first in the Insider, and we will continue to ruffle feathers (even the feathers of a certain dead parrot) by running the stories we want our readers to see – and not what PR & marketing consultants want their clients to see.