Software
Law
Legal
Bill Carter President & CEO, ALM
Bill Carter took leadership of ALM as president and chief executive officer in March 2012. Carter has championed various acquisition strategies advancing the growth and expansion of markets ALM serves. In 2013, Bill was honored as a C-Level Visionary with a Folio: 100 Award. He joined ALM from Thomson Reuters, where he was senior vice president of the Small Law Business Unit since 2010 and led its successful reorganization and growth. An accomplished expert in the digital and legal services industry, he has also driven significant value creation as a senior executive at LexisNexis, Epiq Systems, Gerson Lehrman Group, and GES Exposition Services. Carter earned a B.S. in Computer Science at Tulane University, a Master’s in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, and an MBA with honors from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Overview of the Offering
News and current
awareness offerings for the legal professional serve the same purpose as
general newspapers and magazines. They inform, interpret, and entertain. For
the first 140-plus years, these offerings were focused on news and information
for the attorney, with at best a limited coverage of firms, their clients, and
the industry overall. In the 1970s, a series of events dramatically changed the
landscape and coverage of the legal profession.
Many general and business-oriented news organizations include coverage of the business of law for business and general audiences. Examples include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Reuters. This chapter excludes these generalists, instead focusing on offerings intended for the legal professional.
History of Business of Law Offerings
The concept of
the modern newspaper emerged in 17th-century Europe when printed periodicals
began rapidly replacing hand-written newssheets. The spread of the printing
press enabled the emergence of this new media.
America’s oldest
daily legal newspaper is The Legal
Intelligencer, which serves Philadelphia, PA and the surrounding areas.
Since its founding in 1843, it has set the standard for subsequent legal
newspapers. It covers legal news, decisions, court calendars, and legislation,
and provides analysis and insight in columns written by leading professionals.
Over the next
170 years, daily and weekly newspapers with a geographical focus were
introduced in large legal markets worldwide. In the United States, major titles
include The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin,
The New York Law Journal, The New Jersey Law Journal, The San Francisco Daily Journal, The Connecticut Law Tribune, and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. The Lawyer and Legal Week cover the United Kingdom, the second largest legal
market in the world. Other geographically focused titles include The Canadian Lawyer, The Asian Lawyer, The Latin Lawyer, and The
Iberian Lawyer.
Independent
publishers formed most of these geographically focused publications. These
businesses thrived for many years, monetizing through subscriptions and
advertising. Many became the official newspapers of record, enabling them to publish
public notices, which are required by state regulations to keep the public and
businesses aware of key private and governmental actions. Foreclosures and
LLC/LLP incorporations are typical notices.
In addition to
the privately-owned publications, associations serving segments of the legal
market established monthly publications for their memberships. The American Bar
Association, which serves U.S. attorneys, publishes the ABA Journal. The Association of Corporate Counsel publishes the ACC Docket.
The legal news
and current awareness industry changed dramatically in the 1970s. The U.S.
Supreme Court in Bates v. State Bar of
Arizona (1977) struck down professional barriers against advertising. Marc
Galanter and Thomas Palay wrote in their 1991 book covering the transformation
of big law firms, “A few years later the interested reader could find an
abundance of information about firm organization, finances, relations to
clients, office politics, and so forth.”[1]
Two competing
publications were launched. The National
Law Journal, a weekly newspaper introduced in 1978, covers legal
information of national importance, including federal circuit court decisions,
practitioners’ columns, and coverage of legislative issues. In 1978 the paper
began its annual survey of the nation’s 200 largest law firms; this survey of
the nation’s largest law firms ranked by the number of attorneys each firm has
continues to this day.
The American Lawyer magazine soon
followed in 1979. The first issue emphasized law firm finances and executive
compensation, a topic usually not discussed by lawyers. In the 1980s, The American Lawyer began to publish its
own ranking of the top 100 law firms. Unlike The National Law Journal, it ranked firms based on annual revenues
and subsequently expanded to include partners’ compensation, profitability, and
more detailed attorney counts. By the late 1980s some firms were striving to be
included in The American Lawyer’s
list.
The 1980s until
the early 2000s were a period of consolidation in the U.S. The American Lawyer acquired regional publications in the 1980s. A
new company, ALM, was formed in 1997 through the merger of The American Lawyer, The New
York Law Journal, The National Law
Journal, and other regional newspapers. ALM continued acquiring and by 2010
had established a presence in eight of the top 10 U.S. legal markets, in
addition to international publications. Dolan Media acquired Lawyers Weekly, a publisher of weekly
newspapers in Massachusetts and various secondary markets, and combined it with
other regional publications. The two companies became the largest legal news
and current awareness companies. The emergence of the Internet spawned a new
era of innovation in business of law coverage. The Greedy Associates message boards enabled newly hired associates
to share compensation information at the largest law firms. Above the Law was founded in 2006,
providing content and commentary on salaries, bonuses, law schools, and firms.
Blogs and other
social media became an important part of the information network for legal
professionals, providing notification of early events. SCOTUSblog is one of the better known, as it covers the U.S.
Supreme Court. These blogs pushed the commercial players, forcing them to speed
up their coverage and strengthen their comprehensiveness.
In 2004, Law360 began using technology and quick,
efficient processes to provide timely coverage of countless practice areas.
They extract updates from PACER, the U.S. federal court filing system, tagging
companies and people. This practice-specific news offering enables legal
professionals to keep track of customers and competitors.
Beginning in the
1990s, business of law publishers expanded their product offerings to events
and books. They brought their communities together through the strength of
their brands for education, recognition, and networking. The publishers’ local
connections led to books focused on state-specific legal issues written by
local authors. These new monetization streams fit into the publishers’ vision
of helping their legal communities thrive while helping to offset declining
classified and print advertising.
The economic
downturn in 2008 forced leaders of law firms and in-house counsel to focus more
broadly on the management of their organizations. These days, in addition to
finding business development opportunities and issues, law firms gather
information on their competitors in order to improve their operations;
meanwhile, in-house counsel seek best practices to reduce outside counsel
spending.
Additionally,
clients keep pushing private practice attorneys into narrower niches and
specialties. Instead of being an intellectual property generalist, an attorney
may now be defined as a specialist in patent litigation for large global
corporations with operations in the U.S. and Asia. This trend toward
specialization has happened to other professional services industries and is
not expected to reverse.
The consequence
of these shifts is that legal professionals have become more reliant on current
awareness offerings covering the practice areas and the markets they serve.
They seek news tailored to their specific interests.
These
developments are leading to the integration of business of law content with
substantive (or practice of law) content. This trend accelerated in 2011 when
the large legal information providers – Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and
Bloomberg – moved to expand the news offerings available with their legal
research systems, resulting in increased partnership and acquisition activity.
LexisNexis signed an exclusive license agreement with ALM to provide its
content through the Lexis legal research system. This was followed by
Bloomberg’s acquisition of BNA, a daily practice of law and current awareness
provider focused on particular specialty areas. In March of 2012, LexisNexis
acquired Law360. Thomson Reuters
responded by forming a partnership with Wolters Kluwer, providing daily current
awareness content to users of Thomson’s legal research system, Westlaw. ALM
acquired RivalEdge, a media company that allows lawyers to monitor a variety of
sources for changes in law firm activity and personnel. In October 2014,
LexisNexis acquired Moreover Technologies, an online tool that aggregates, monitors,
and analyzes large volumes of news, legal, and social media data to help law
firms and corporations understand key market trends.
This increased investment in the legal professional news space has led to a new wave of experimentation and innovation. The goal is to deliver exactly the content a legal professional needs to be successful.
Market Size
The worldwide
legal current awareness market is estimated to be approximately $400-$500
million in annual revenues with low-single-digit growth.
The U.S. market
is the largest at approximately $300 million. ALM is the top player with
$175-$200 million in revenues, or about 40 percent market share. Dolan Media is
the second largest player with $50-$75 million in revenues.[2] Law360 has estimated annual revenues of
$25-$30 million, followed by Law Bulletin Media with estimated $10-$15 million.[3] The Daily Journal has revenues of $5-15
million.[4]
The United
Kingdom is the second largest market with $25-$50 million in revenues. Three of
the larger players in the market are The
Lawyer, Law Business Research,
and Legal Week.
Publishers in the emerging markets are typically independent organizations owned and operated by the founders. The largest of these rely on print products for the majority of their revenues.
Future Trends
A significant
challenge to delivering legal professionals the information they need is the
flood of content; it can overwhelm. Recognizing this, the largest of the legal
news and current awareness providers are developing online platforms allowing
for unified offerings tailored to the legal professional, requiring investment
in metadata and filtering technologies.
It is unknown
how much technology can solve the filtering issue. Human intervention and their
ability to curate is highly valued today. Will technology be able to
distinguish the important from the routine? Will it be able to identify
relevant broader stories on companies or industries? Will human editors always
be required?
The business of
law publishing market is expected to continue consolidation. The ongoing shift
of the readership to online publications will require more advanced digital
platforms. Smaller players will struggle to generate the required investments
while realizing fewer ad dollars online versus print. Additionally, integration
and linking of news and information will advance and become an expected part of
the reader’s experience. Legal professionals will anticipate unified,
personalized news offerings with global coverage.
The next decade promises to be another period of innovation for the business of law publishing industry.