Letter from the Editor:

The following letter from Joff Wild, Editor, IAM, was prompted by the previous post, The British are Here! (It’s run with permission.)

“One of the reasons for the British taking to IP/legal publishing ahead of most of the rest of the world is that the UK legal market was deregulated before most other countries. This allowed law firms and lawyers to advertise, which all of a sudden meant it made sense to produce publications other than straight, subscription journals based on case and legislative reports.

“Obviously, because we have been doing it longer than most people, we have a lot of ingrained experience and expertise. And the market is still young enough to mean that a lot of us who were working on these early publications in the late 80s and early 90s are still around.

“You know Tony Harriss one of the directors of Globe Business Publishing and a co-owner of IAM; well, he started working for Legalease, which produces the Legal 500 directories and the monthly Legal Business, in the late 80s, as did his fellow Globe directors Mark Lamb and Guy Davies. A lot of other senior Globe people have spent time at Legalease. Nigel Page of White Page, who you have also met, was an early editor of Legal Business.

“For my part, I started on Patent World, Copyright World and Trademark World in 1992 (they have folded into IP Magazine, of course, which means another one of IPMG’s publications, World Trademark Review, is now the only independent, international trademark publication out there). You mentioned Jeremy [Phillips] in your blog – well, he was actually responsible for getting the “Worlds”  off the ground; he started MIP when he fell out with their original publisher and Euromoney subsequently bought him out.

“I was hired to take over from Jeremy on MIP in 1994 and recruited James Nurton (now Editor of MIP) in 1996 straight out of university. James took over from me as editor of MIP when I took responsibility for all IP products at Euromoney in 1998. I started IAM with Globe White Page in 2003, having pitched it to American Lawyer in the UK and the people at Informa, both of whom turned me down (or, more accurately, never got back to me after initial meetings).

“Sometimes things just work out for the best!”

All the best,

Joff
Joff Wild
Editor, IAM magazine