100 years on, the Gazette is still on the case

The Gazette this year enters its 100th year of providing news for the legalprofession.

The Law Society's Gazette and Register was first published in November 1903, in response to a need to inform the profession.

From about 1888 until then, the Society had produced the Register, which simply contained details of property sales and mortgages offered by solicitors, and jobs and partnerships solicitors were advertising or seeking.

The monthly A5-sized publication became the Gazette in December 1905, with the Register as a supplement.

The Gazette was produced continuously through both world wars.

In 1966, it moved to an A4 format, and in September 1970 launched an A3 Gazette News supplement, which was designed to 'cover items which practitioners would not necessarily wish to include in their bound copies at the end of the year'.

The main Gazette covered hard law issues.

The Gazette became weekly in January 1972 in a single A3 publication.

A variety of people welcomed the magazine going weekly, including Prime Minister Edward Heath.

It reverted to its current smaller size in 1983.

The Gazette now has a circulation of almost 100,000, making it one of the largest business-to-business publications in the country.

The first issue in 1903 was 32 pages long and contained, among other things, a report on the Solicitors Benevolent Association's annual general meeting, and an obituary of William Dawes Freshfield, senior partner of the firm known today as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and even then one of the best-known and regarded practices in the City.

We will be publishing a full appreciation of the Gazette's centenary later in the year.