Forward Features 2010 – fame at last

As part of our New Year's resolutions, Legal Week has decided to break with its long-cherished tradition of hiding its forward features calendar in places on our website so obscure that even I on occasion struggle to find it.

The list, which can be accessed by clicking here, details the features we have scheduled for 2010.

One of the reasons we are aiming to make the upcoming features line-up more easily available is because we want to step up the quality of commissioning this year.

As such, we're increasingly looking to bring in opinion-formers to write on topics that will actually engage readers and, in particular, clients. That approach has already been evident in our In depth strand, but hopefully we will be approaching all commissioning in this vein.

After all, commissioning is a bit like the editorial equivalent of playing the guitar: easy to scrape by at, very hard to do well. To be frank, many widely-varying publications use commissioned material as an easy way to fill space; I have zero interest in this kind of wallpapering.

The deal I make with contributors is this: the more effort you put into articles, the more weight and prominence we can give when publishing them. So if you have some meaty research or have practitioners with something to say in a genuinely interesting area, let's have a conversation about how we can turn that into good copy. For similar reasons, I'm also interested in partnering with individual law firms on set-piece editorial projects.

Our features editor, Charlotte Edmond, has also asked me to mention that if you are interested in contributing to a topic, your chances of getting in are considerably improved if you contact her at least six weeks in advance. Those with any questions regarding features please feel free to contact either Charlotte or myself.

And while I am handling editorial house-keeping, I may as well mention the Legal Week Wiki. A lot of firms ask how they can contribute information or help update their Wiki entry. There is a specific questionnaire for that purpose. Any featured firm that wants to submit material should email our web editor on ben.wheway@legalweek.com to get the form.

Click here to download the Legal Week Forward Features list 2010