This Week In Legal Tech: Where Are The Legal Tech Journalists?

How many journalists can you name who regularly cover legal technology?

keyboard typingThis week in legal technology news, Legaltech West Coast kicks off in San Francisco today, and it has me wondering where all the legal technology journalists have gone.

While not as big as its East Coast sibling, Legaltech New York, the West Coast version is nonetheless a major U.S. legal technology conference. Last week, I happened to see the press list for the conference – the list of people who have registered as journalists to cover it.

The list has six names. Two are not actually journalists. One of the two is a former journalist who now works as an industry analyst. The other is a “content strategist” who develops content to “help companies meet customer needs and business goals.”

That leaves four names on the list. All four work for the same publication, Legaltech News, which is owned by the same company, ALM, that produces the Legaltech conference. As a matter of fact, ALM rebranded the publication last year from its former name, Law Technology News, so it would be more closely aligned with the conference.

That means there is not a single truly independent journalist covering this major legal technology event.

And it is not just this event. How many full-time journalists can you name who regularly cover legal technology? How many legal publications can you name with regular legal technology writers? For that matter, how many legal publications can you name that regularly cover legal technology at all?

Other than Legaltech News, I can think of only two U.S. publications that are dedicated to the subject of legal technology. One is Legal Tech Newsletter, also an ALM publication, whose articles are mostly lawyer or vendor contributions. The other is Technolawyer, which is actually a group of e-newsletters, some that contain original articles, some that curate links from external sources, and one that runs paid industry press releases.

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As for journalists who regularly cover legal technology anywhere other than at Legaltech News, just two names come to mind: Monica Bay, the former Law Technology News editor who now writes for Bloomberg Law’s Big Law Business, the CodeX Blog, and here at ATL, and Victor Li, also an alumnus of Law Technology News and now a legal affairs writer at the ABA Journal.

(I apologize profusely to anyone I’ve overlooked here. And I am intentionally omitting non-U.S. legal technology journalists, such as the UK’s Charles Christian of Legal IT Insider and freelancer Joanna Goodman, who covers technology for The Law Society Gazette and other publications.)

It wasn’t always this way. Legal newspapers and magazines had reporters who regularly covered legal technology and some even had editors who focused on legal technology. I do not mean to suggest we were ever drowning in reporters covering legal technology, but there were more working journalists on this beat a decade ago than there are today.

You’re probably thinking, “So what else is new?” After all, the situation I’m describing is but a snippet of the broader news media landscape. You’re right. There are fewer reporters on any beat these days, whether it’s the courthouse, the statehouse, or the local school board. But for legal technology, coverage has virtually evaporated.

In part, the vacuum is being filled by bloggers who write about technology, as well as by practitioners who contribute technology reviews and columns to an array of commercial and bar publications. These blogs and columns are often superb, and the bylines of some of the best legal technology bloggers grace the pages of this blog, including Niki Black, Jeff Bennion, Zach Abramowitz, and the aforementioned Monica Bay.

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For the most part, however, tech bloggers and columnists are focused on writing product reviews and how-to pieces. These are important and helpful and I do not mean in any way to minimize them. On top of that, they all have day jobs – some as lawyers and some within the legal tech industry. Their tech writing is a sideline and their day jobs may constrain their coverage. (That goes for me, as well.)

What’s largely lacking, however, is a broader critical eye, looking not at specific products and apps, but at the companies behind them, the people behind those companies, and the industry overall.

I’ve been writing at my own blog about a legal technology startup whose CEO is alleged to have masterminded a half-million-dollar fraud in which he allegedly impersonated a lawyer and forged court and government documents.

All the while, the company and its CEO were the toast of Silicon Valley, winning entrepreneur and innovation awards, substantial investments, and glowing write-ups in the news. In fact, the company was scheduled to be featured on an innovation panel this week at Legaltech until my initial blog post appeared. Had it not been for a tip from an astute reader, I would have missed the story as well.

It’s left me wondering about the lack of a critical eye on the industry and from where that critical eye should come. Lawyers have an ethical duty to exercise reasonable care in selecting a vendor, but there are practical limits to how diligent their due diligence can be. Industry analysts can play a role here, but they tend to focus on market trends and rely heavily on company-provided information.

So where have all the legal technology journalists gone? I’m not sure. But I am sure that I wish a few of them would come back.


Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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