Digital Publishing
2 mins read

Quiet revolution at The Lawyer as reader revenues exceed 40% total

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Just five years ago, The Lawyer was a weekly free print magazine, wholly funded by advertising.

Now it is digital-first, has a premium subscription product in its Litigation Tracker, and its magazine is published monthly.

Centaur’s interim results state that The Lawyer’s premium content revenues had grown by 18% on the previous year and are likely to exceed 40% of total revenues by the end of 2020.

So how do you persuade an exacting audience of lawyers to pay for content that they used to get for free?

Catrin Griffiths, Editor of the Lawyer since 2000, has built up an experienced editorial team who understand the sector in depth.

She believes that it is the quality of the editorial analysis that really adds value to news and data.

Just over a year ago, The Lawyer launched a Litigation Tracker, which compiles details on all disputes in the English courts.

This is a separate premium subscription to the main publication and has proved highly popular. The data is in the public domain but had never before been aggregated.

The Lawyer’s editorial team has expanded as they have added new paid-for products, but journalists work across all disciplines: news, analysis, features and data, as Catrin believes that generates new insights for the industry.

Catrin is speaking at Making Publishing Pay, a conference for senior leaders in consumer and B2B media businesses, on 25 February 2020 in London. She will share her experiences of moving from free to paid content, including:

  • How to identify new information needs
  • How editorial insight and analysis adds value to data
  • Which premium products haven’t worked and what has been learned
  • How the editorial team has grown and developed to manage the new products
  • Why journalists should work across all products
  • Where The Lawyer will go next

Delegates will have plenty of opportunities to ask questions about the process and understand how they could apply a similar approach to their own media business.


What’s New in Publishing is the media partner for Making Publishing Pay, a conference for independent publishing and media businesses that will inspire with stories of innovation and provide real-world practical tips on how to diversify revenues and build value within a media business.

See the full agenda here.