Rollonfriday

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**RollOnFriday**

URL	http://www.rollonfriday.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Portal
Registration	RollOnFriday Limited
Owner	RollOnFriday Limited
Created by	RollOnFriday Limited

RollOnFriday (http://www.rollonfriday.com/) (also known as 'RoF') is a website designed for and used by those involved in the legal profession, from law students to qualified solicitors and barristers. Its readership expands beyond this, however, and includes journalists (legal and otherwise) and others from outside the profession.

The site is unique in that it provides an insight into the workings of the legal profession in the United Kingdom that no other legal site does. As well its own editorial, which includes information on salaries paid by large law firms, it allows lawyers to discuss the workings and operations of law firms in an anonymous and frank forum which is unheard of in the British legal environment.

1 History and content
2 The discussion board
3 Mentions from outside
4 References

[edit] History and content

The site was established in 2000^[1] by Matthew Rhodes and Piers Warburton. The two met while solicitors at the London law firm Ashurst (where Warburton still works). Warburton said at the time that the site was intended to be "young, irreverent and a bit cheeky" ^[2].

From launch, the site provided irreverent weekly news stories ^[3], detailed information on individual law firms [1] including the salaries they pay and weekly features such as "glamorous solicitor" [2] showcasing some of the more interestingly-featured of the world's lawyers.

In 2001, the website launched its discussion board (see below) and more recently the website has developed a jobs database and other recruitment facilities^[4]. Over the years the site has grown in popularity to the extent it is now part of the legal establishment it once lampooned. Several leading United Kingdom law firms use it as a means of advertising and its own in house recruitment service is acknowledged as being successful^[5].

RollOnFriday's significance as a talking point for lawyers in Britain is that is has provided an important balance to often biased commentaries and influences from other similar boards run by recruiters.

According to the site's Terms and Conditions, RollOnFriday is an Ainsley free zone. ^[6]

[edit] The discussion board

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The discussion board can be accessed here.

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", with female users sometimes being referred to as "RoFettes".

This Board has grown in popularity over the duration of the site, its contents sometimes irreverent and off the wall, often amusing and occasionally obscene. Posts debate legal issues and current news stories of interest; discuss the profession; hammer Tony Blair (and other politicians and public figures); and swap details of London life. On occasion they assist co-posters with job applications and provide advice on academia, life crises, and restaurants to dine at. Other times it's used as a dating service, as a means for individuals to post emoticons, to tell others that they have email and to arrange RoF drinks.

Posters run a daily battle with the site's Censor, an anonymous killjoy, whose powers include pulling any thread that threatens to step out of line (e.g. for obscenity) and banning users deemed to be responsible for such outrages. There is no official mechanism for resurrecting usernames, once banned, but dedicated users who have suffered this punishment often find their way back to the Board, using aliases to disguise their identities. This has led to the phenomenon of regular posters addressing their compadres by their old usernames, which may differ greatly from the ones with which they are now posting; something that can take new users, or "newbies" some time to get to grips with. The addition of a norty button which allows users to "Report Offensive Threads" has allowed RoFers a degree of autonomy in policing their own affairs.

Over the years, its posters have developed their own form of slang with words and phrases such as lollers, alan, orla, everybody cheered, growler, heh, and nuffink assuming special unique meaning. Terms such as norty, filf, leetle, horn, hmong, mongtard, ghey and wood are also common parlance. These terms are complemented by the ability to print the text in italics, bold or even miniature fonts adding emphasis to such posts.

Perhaps the most famous of all posters is Lydia, mother of the board, successful sole practitioner and mother of Ls 1-5, after her oft-described divorce from Mr Ex-L. A similar story has been played out between mr pithecanthropus and menefreghismo, a love that has been sundered by the poor rail links between London and Manchester.

In recent times, RollOnFriday's Board has developed its own zoo, with a dog, donkey, alpaca, manatee, cataffe (a mythical creature half-cat, half-giraffe, but all RoF) and its own pest controller, zookeeper and dogwarden. The RoF zoo does not have a breeding programme.

Possibly the highest honour that can be bestowed on a poster is the granting, by the Board's authorities, of an icon that will appear whenever his or her name appears. This has led to occasionally unseemly (and usually fruitless) campaigns by needy posters, begging for an icon; a spectacle that is frowned upon by the Board's old guard.

The Board is widely acknoweldged as being highly addictive, with posters occasionally declaring their intention never to post again (before returning, usually within the day). Roffers and Roffettes have however become increasingly concerned that roffing may land them in trouble with their employers.

In October 2006, partly in order to dispel the rumours that all RoFers and RoFettes were actually either Wang or Artoo, a census was taken by shabby. This user implored all posters to provide details necessary to gauge the demographics of the RoF community and armed with nothing more than GCSE maths and a calculator, Shabby compiled the results from 122 replies. Not only did this endeavour result in quite possibly the largest thread in RoF history, extending to some 750 posts, but the following information was gleaned from the study;

Gender - Male: 66% Female: 34%

Age - 20-25: 20% 25-30: 34% 30-40: 39% 40+: 5% not given: 2%

Location - London: 69% Manchester: 6% Livepool: 2% Hampshire: 1% York: 1% Brighton: 1% Leeds: 2% Brum: 2% Southampton: 2% Nottingham: 1% Cardiff: 1% Lincolnshire: 1% Exeter: 1% 'North East': 1% Outside UK: 8% Jersey: 1%

Position - Undergrad: 8% LPC: 7% BVC: 1% GDL: 2% Trainee: 6% Pupil: 1% NQ: 9% +1: 7% +2: 6% 3+: 23% Partner: 5% Barrister: 3% Other(law): 12% Other(non-law): 15%

Hair Colour - Brown: 55% Blonde: 20% Black: 14% Ginger: 4% No hair: 2% Mixed (i.e. grey!): 5%

Sexuality - Straight: 89% Bi: 4% Gay (male): 4% Lesbian: 2% Unsure: 1%

Religion - CofE: 18% Catholic: 14% Jewish: 5% Hindu: 3% Sikh: 0.8% Islam: 0.8% Atheist: 30% Agnostic: 7% Jedi: 2.8% Christian: 6% Methodist: 0.8 Mormon: 0.8 Not sure: 4% Other: 7%

Judging by these results, the average RoFer is a London-based, atheistic straight male, between 30 and 40 years of age, with brown hair and at least 3 years pqe but not yet a partner! Furthermore, there are more Jedis than at least 4 other recognised religions!

[edit] 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.

National newspapers