Rollonfriday

RollOnFriday

File:Rof.jpg
Owner	RollOnFriday Limited
Created by	Matthew Rhodes Piers Warburton
URL	http://www.rollonfriday.com/

RollOnFriday (also known as 'RoF') is a website designed for and used by those involved in the legal profession, from law students to qualified solicitors and barristers. Its readership expands beyond this, however, and includes journalists (legal and otherwise) and others from outside the profession.

The site is unique in that it provides an insight into the workings of the legal profession in the United Kingdom that no other legal site does. As well its own editorial, which includes information on salaries paid by large law firms, it allows lawyers to discuss the workings and operations of law firms in an anonymous and frank forum which is unheard of in the British legal environment.

History and content

The site was established in 2000 by Matthew Rhodes and Piers Warburton. The two met while solicitors at the London law firm Ashurst (where Warburton still works as a junior partner). Warburton said at the time that the site was intended to be "young, irreverent and a bit cheeky".

From launch, the site provided irreverent weekly news stories, detailed information on individual law firms [1] including the salaries they pay and weekly features such as "glamorous solicitor" [2] showcasing some of the more interestingly-featured of the world's lawyers.

In 2001, the website launched its discussion board and more recently the website has developed a jobs database and other recruitment facilities. Over the years the site has grown in popularity to the extent it is now part of the legal establishment it once lampooned. Several leading United Kingdom law firms use it as a means of advertising and its own in house recruitment service is acknowledged as being successful.

RollOnFriday's significance as a talking point for lawyers in Britain is that is has provided an important balance to often biased commentaries and influences from other similar boards run by recruiters.

According to the site's Terms of Use, RollOnFriday is a "Peaches free zone".

Discussion board

For many users, the highlight of the site is its discussion board. The "board" allows posters on its forum to choose unique usernames. Such users are known as "Rofers", with the younger female users often being referred to as "Rofettes".

This board has grown in popularity over the duration of the site. Posts debate legal issues and current news stories of interest; discuss the profession; criticise Tony Blair (and other politicians and public figures); and swap details of London life. On occasion they assist co-posters with job applications and provide advice on academia, life crises, and restaurants to dine at. Other times it's used as a dating service, as a means for individuals to post emoticons, to tell other posters that they have email and to arrange RoF drinks evenings. The recent addition of a dedicated trainee discussion board has allowed those seeking entry into the English legal profession to seek advice from fellow job seekers and those already practising.

The site's moderators powers include pulling any thread and banning users as they see fit. There is no official mechanism for resurrecting usernames, once banned, but dedicated users who have suffered this punishment can find their way back to the board, using aliases to disguise their identities or just sucking up to Piers and Maffew.

This has led to the phenomenon of regular posters addressing their compadres by their old usernames, which may differ greatly from the ones with which they are now posting; something that can take new users, or "newbies", some time to get to grips with. The addition of the "report offensive thread" button has allowed Rofers a degree of autonomy in policing their own affairs.

Over the years, its posters have developed their own form of slang with words and phrases such as lollers, alan, orla, everybody cheered, growler, heh, and nuffink assuming special unique meaning. Terms such as norty, filf, leetle, horn, hmong, mongtard, ghey and wood are also common parlance. These terms are complemented by the ability to print the text in italics, bold or even miniature fonts adding emphasis to such posts.

Recently, concern has been expressed that the Censor has adopted too hard-lined an approach, banning the boards more interesting and controversial posters such as Legal Alien, Admiral Akbar and General von Klinkerhoffen and any other posters it sees fit without proper cause or reason. Some have predicted this will inevitably lead to the downfall of RoF, with increasing numbers of posters simply using the board to massage each others egos by telling them they are "gorge", informing them they have "poked" each other on facebook, giggling, *waving* and organising to go for rof drinks together. Admiral Akbar and General von Klinkerhoffen were banned for trying to bum the rof animals and causing them great distress. Legends such as Shabby (AKA Census Taking Legend), have survived these vicious cullings.

There has also been some speculation of late amongst long-standing posters about a possible decline in the quality of the board. A five Tunna by noted smallholder Dogwarden recently complained of fallin standards and led to newbies running crying from the board. Recently the poster 'mr pithecanthropus', holder of the 'Roffer of the Year' title only as recently as 2006 (awarded for his mixture of humour, controversy, good debating topics, and stuffing of the ballotboxes using his alternative posting identities), was blamed for his part in this, being indicted before the Board on the charge of 'Not being as funny as before P1 [his eldest child] was born [in May 2007]'. On failing to plead he was deemed guilty and sentenced in his absence to 3 months of exile from the board. Shortly afterwards he returned and announced 'If not being as funny as I was before P1 was born is a crime, then lock me up and throw away the key, because I don't want to be as funny as I was before P1 was born anymore' before threatening to kill his indicter and turning on respected poster Intellectual Papacy, author of the serial story 'Bear in the Workplace'. It was felt that this behaviour of mr pithecanthropus bore out the charges brought against him.

The board's authorities can grant an icon to users that will appear whenever his or her name appears. This has occasionally led to campaigns by posters begging for an icon. A notable example of this is the victorious 'Owl' campaign, although purists discount this campaign as its purpose was purely to obtain an Owl icon, rather than for it to appear when a particular poster's name was posted.

dont forget nev

Mentions from outside

On occasion stories have broken on the website, legal and otherwise, which have been taken up in national newspapers. The following is a list of some outside mentions.

National newspapers

The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2177760.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1750863,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4003-2189092.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1750863_1,00.html

The Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article140472.ece

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian_jobs_and_money/story/0,,1211702,00.html

The Daily Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/11/nmoney211.xml

Legal journals

The Lawyer

http://www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=106327&d=11&h=24&f=23

The Law Society Gazette

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/features/view=feature.law?FEATUREID=241307

Universities

Various UK and overseas univerities recommend the site to law students for information about UK law firms

University of Hull

http://www.hull.ac.uk/law/courses/ug/lawyer.html

Imperial College

http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/law/links.html

Lancaster University

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/law/currrent/resources/careers/index.htm

the University of Victoria

http://cdo.law.uvic.ca/CareerResearch.html

External links

• RollOnFriday
• RollOnFriday discussion board