Type of site Lawyers Information Launched 2000 | Owner RollOnFriday Limited | |
Created by Matthew Rhodes
Piers Warburton Website | ||
RollOnFriday (also known as RoF) is a British website designed for and used by those involved in the legal profession, from law students to qualified solicitors and barristers including Queen's Counsel. Its readership also includes journalists and others from outside the profession.
Contents
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 partner). Warburton said at the time that the site was intended to be 'young, irreverent and a bit cheeky'.
From launch, the site provided silly weekly news stories, detailed information on individual law firms - including the salaries they pay - and weekly features such as 'glamorous solicitor' showcasing some of the more interesting looking of the world's lawyers.
In 2001, the website launched the discussion board and more recently has developed a jobs database and other recruitment facilities. Over the years the site has grown in popularity and is now an established part of the legal market. Over 50 of the UK's leading law firms use it as a means of advertising and make use of its graduate and lateral recruitment databases: Fast Track and Make Me An Offer.
The website had a major revamp at the end of May 2009.
According to the site's Terms of Use, RollOnFriday is a "Pete and Katie 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' or just 'fers', with the female users often being referred to as 'RoFettes' ('fets' is a recent innovation) although 'luv' has become a more common form of address.
The board has grown in popularity over the life of the site. Posters debate legal issues and news stories, discuss the profession and swap details of London life, construed generously to include the minutiae of their private lives. On occasion posters help co-posters with job applications and provide advice on academia, life crises and good restaurants. At other times the board serves as a dating service, a means for individuals to post emoticons, a place to tell other posters that they have email and as an excuse to arrange 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.
Over the years, the posters of RoF have developed their own patois with words and phrases such as 'lollers', 'alan', 'orla', 'everybody cheered', 'growler', 'heh', 'bloata', and 'nuffink' assuming special meaning. Terms such as 'norty', 'filf', 'leetle', 'horn', 'hmong', 'mongtard', 'ghey' and 'wood' (and its rhetorical or sometimes genuinely inquisitive counterpart, 'wood u') are also common parlance. Moving somewhat nearer the boundaries, oblique references to seeing you next Tuesday mushroomed to the point where RoF's administrators were forced to launch their own lexical counter-offensive, resulting in phrases like 'ladypart' and 'kittens' unexpectedly and automatically peppering general discussion. RoF terminology is complemented by the ability to present text in italics, bold or even miniature font. The expression *throws sandwich* is used to highlight a poster's weight issues.
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.