Over the years, I have developed a robust sense of whether a threatening legal letter needs to be taken seriously. And some of them are very threatening indeed.

Larger media organisations have in-house lawyers, but at City AM we have an excellent lawyer on a retainer, and I have reason to talk to him most weeks. It is those conversations that have honed my sense of whether we are gearing up for a fight or, as is increasingly the case, the furious legal bluster is actually just a PR response on steroids. As editor-in-chief, legal responsibility for all our published stories lies with me, and me alone. If things go wrong, I can’t blame a junior: this is not the Civil Service.

I think I can plot my trajectory as an editor through the various legal threats I have had to deal with: I may be a good judge of them now, but this wasn’t always the case. The first such letter I received made my blood run cold, and I still remember exactly where I was when I read it on my phone.

I had just moved into a bachelor pad in the heart of the Square Mile, having taken up the role of editor a month earlier. Frankly, my head was still spinning from the appointment. One day I was a 27-year-old PR guy in Westminster, and the next I was being unveiled as the new editor of City AM.

The decision by the newspaper’s owners to recruit someone as editor who had never worked as a journalist took plenty of people by surprise, none more than me. I’d spent a few years working in communications and lobbying for think-tanks, mostly of the free-market kind, and by the summer of 2015 I was Head of Communications and Campaigns at the Institute of Directors.

In that role, I often appeared in the media as a pundit and spokesperson but, while I had a Masters degree in journalism, I’d never really put it to use, other than by selling diary stories for beer money. So when City AM’s proprietors asked to meet me, I went along to dinner in a state of mild curiosity. I left, somewhat drunkenly, as their new editor.

I had no idea what I’d signed up to. I didn’t know what the editor’s job was, and I was more than a little concerned that the newsroom would raise a collective eyebrow at my inexperience. This wasn’t a case of imposter syndrome; it was a case of being an actual imposter.

Some sniffy media coverage of my appointment only added to my nerves, but support came from some unexpected places. The brilliant journalist and author Iain Martin, whom I’d never met, wrote me an email based on the eight pieces of advice that an editorial grandee had sent him when he also found himself promoted to a top newspaper job at a young age. I think of that letter often, and the act of kindness that lay behind it. Iain’s final piece of advice was: “Enjoy it, this will be the most fun you can have with your trousers on.”

He was right, but as I stood in my new flat reading the email from one of London’s most notorious law firms, I thought the fun (and my luck) had run out. The previous day we had run a story on a slump in the resale value of off-plan properties at the (then fledgling) Battersea Power Station development. Our irresistible headline was “Battersea Panic Stations”.

Unfortunately, they didn’t see the funny side. Their lawyers informed me that I would be held personally responsible for the multi-million-pound valuation hit. As I looked around my new City pad on a Friday evening, I thought, “well, it was good while it lasted.” Imagine my relief when our lawyer, Paul Fox, sent me a message saying “Don’t worry, it’s bollocks, they’re just angry. I’ll reply on Monday.”

That was more than a decade ago – since when, I’m pleased to say, Battersea has become a spectacularly successful showcase for redevelopment – and I went on to serve as editor for another five years, before hopping the fence for a career change in corporate communications.

The less said about that experiment the better, and I was delighted when City AM’s new owners invited me to take up the editor’s pen once again in the summer of 2024. Much had changed in my absence, largely thanks to Covid (again, the less said the better) but under new ownership and with a post-pandemic spring in its step, City AM had roared back to life and now, a year on, I think it’s in the best shape it’s ever been.

Paul Fox is still our lawyer, and we still have to talk to each other often. There was the murky world of whisky investments (Boisdale fans are surely too savvy to get roped in) and the increasingly threatening objections of the subject of our investigation.

There was the international banking executive who didn’t like one of our stories. There was the well-known company whose six-page letter amounted to a scream of frustration. There was the multi-layered investigation into various shenanigans at a listed UK firm.

And these are all just from recent weeks. Often, we send stories to Paul for his approval, pre-publication, and while he might suggest a sharpening or a softening of tone, generally he replies with a thumbs-up.