Bio

Background and Format: The Times Law section covers all legal stories. Every Monday – Friday, the day starts at 10am with a ‘kick-about’ meeting where the team float ideas and talk about stories that they have lined up. They also circulate a fledgling news list. This lasts for roughly 15 mins.   Most journalists don’t get in until 10am. 9:30am is the earliest, really, as most of them are working until 8/9pm the night before.   At 11am and 3:30pm there are newspaper conferences, where the Editors or Deputy Editors of each department meet with the Editor of The Times to go through the entire news list. This is where a lot of the structure for next day’s paper is formed. The 11am meeting lasts roughly an hour and the 3:30pm meeting lasts 40 minutes. In the ten minutes after the meeting has finished the Editors will discuss with their teams what the plan for the next day is and what has come out of the last hour/40 mins.   3pm onwards is when a lot of the articles are written. Articles can take anything from 20 mins to 3 hours to write. This time is dependent on how big the article needs to be and availability of quotes and opinions from experts, witnesses etc. The Times are always keen to get quotes and opinions into their articles. 12:30/12:45am – the planning meetings begin. This is where the production editors come in and start putting stories to pages, working out which articles need to be long, which need to be short, how they fit around adverts etc. If a massive story comes in in the early hours of the morning, they can usually get the story into the paper, but they’ll only do this for major news.   Mornings are the best time for PRs to get in touch, specifically around 10:15am, when they’ve had their 10am meeting and are on the prowl for stories. Up until about 3pm is fine, but as stated above this is when the journalists usually start writing so they should have their stories by this point. Deadline: Wednesday. Time of Publication: Thursday Gorkana Consumer Alert: Tuesday 16 January 2007 The Times Law Panel launches in today's Times Law supplement. An advisory body of 100 of the country's top lawyers, the panel will serve as the centrepiece of our expanding online law section, providing a sounding board for news coverage and allowing readers an insight into the debates taking place at the highest level of the profession. Members cover a range of expertise from the high street to the City, including notable names such as Philippe Sands, QC, Keir Starmer, QC, John Kelsey-Fry, QC, Michael Hatchard, Martyn Day, Marco Compagnoni and Claire Canning. For the full list, go to www.timesonline.co.uk/law. For more information or to offer interviews or story pitches, contact Times Online's Law Editor Alex Spence at alex.spence@thetimes.co.uk