Legal Publisher Makes Legal News More Accessible, Without Paywalls

Fastcase, a leader in legal publishing, today announced the relaunch of Law Street Media, a legal news service that publishes emerging legal news by industry and enables readers to track litigation, companies, and firms within industry sectors. The first service will cover high tech and will leverage Fastcase’s wealth of real-time docket, litigation, and analytics information to create legal news that generates business for its users.

Furthering Fastcase’s mission to democratize the law, Law Street Media provides legal news content for free, enabling readers to access full legal news articles, stories, and content related to specific industries. Law Street Media’s seamless integration with Fastcase and Docket Alarm surfaces breaking case law and key litigation filings, and gives subscribers to these services the ability to immediately set up alerts and view analytics.

In addition to reading legal news online at http://www.lawstreetmedia.com, readers can subscribe for customized daily delivery of the day’s stories at https://lawstreetmedia.com/subscribe-lsm/. There is no charge to subscribe or access full articles.

« We are excited to advance the way legal professionals stay ahead of the curve for the industries and clients they serve, » said David Nayer, Editor in Chief of Law Street Media. « We have a straightforward vision: news leads to business. News leading to business could be as simple as tracking emerging litigation, but today, with docket alerts and analytics, it extends to tracking a growing company’s litigation docket, or the law firms that represent those companies. Law Street changes the way we consume legal news and simultaneously transforms news into immediate business opportunities for law firms. »

This segment features emerging litigation in technology, from data privacy and government regulation, to the privacy rights of individuals from hacking, to the commercialization of their private information. Articles include coverage of tech giants, emerging tech, tech policy, cybersecurity, and intellectual property.

Articles and content on Law Street Media are enriched with public links to judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, docket sheets, and pleadings, viewable for free courtesy of Fastcase and Docket Alarm. Articles will soon include a Docket Alarm Alert Center, allowing users to easily set up alerts and conduct related analytics using their Docket Alarm accounts. Law Street will also include articles submitted by individual leaders in specific industries, trending pop-up litigation centers based on filing analytics, and custom-curated articles provided in an exclusive partnership with LexBlog.

« Legal news is in a terrible state of disrepair, » said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters, a former journalist who worked for The Washington Post and The New York Times. « Articles are paywalled to the hilt, and often target clicks to support ads. Our focus will be how to help law firms increase business, or for corporate counsel, how to manage legal risk. Our sourcing costs will be lower because our team at Fastcase has amazing access to real-time lawsuit information from dockets, agency rulemaking from updates to regulations, expert authors to provide commentary, and timely judicial opinions, » Walters added.

The redesign of Law Street Media takes the original vision of founder John Jenkins, his designers, and developers, and adds elements of user-friendly navigation to high-value sources. « The challenge to creating a legal news site that is in line with what a modern attorney expects in 2020 is to thoughtfully add alerts and links within an intuitive structure, » notes Digital Marketing Project Manager Castro Duvall. « Having the founding team of Law Street Media and the community support of peer legal news experts on our Board has enabled us to share design prototypes and intelligently expand the offerings of Law Street Media. »

Law Street Media’s Advisory Board is a strength, including some of the most experienced legal news executives in the world. The Board includes Bob Ambrogi, Editor in Chief at LexBlog; Laurence Colletti, Executive Producer of the podcast powerhouse Legal Talk Network; Law Street Media Founder John Jenkins; David Lat, Managing Director of Lateral Link and Founder of Above the Law; Jean O’Grady, Founder and author of leading legal blog Dewey B. Strategic; Kevin O’Keefe, Founder of LexBlog, the world’s largest platform for legal blogs; Aric Press, Partner at PP&C Consulting, LLC and former Editor in Chief of American Lawyer Media; Michael Sander Founder of Docket Alarm and Managing Director of Fastcase Analytics; and Kevin Vermeulen, Partner and COO of Good2bSocial and former Chief Revenue Officer of American Lawyer Media.

Readers can look forward to expanded Law Street coverage over the next year, with agriculture news on deck. The news platform will also introduce a variety of premium features, including in-depth emerging litigation newsfeeds for state bar members, visuals of year-over-year firm representation of companies, and an enhanced analytics and reporter service.

« It’s time for someone to fix legal news, and we’re going to do it, » Walters said. « We’re going to publish timely, must-read legal news, without paywalls, spyware ads, or bloat. The future of legal news starts now. »

About Law Street Media
Law Street Media publishes legal news that leads to business. The news service was founded by legal journalist John Jenkins in 2013 and acquired by Fastcase in 2018. The reboot of Law Street complements Fastcase’s goal of democratizing the law and providing a smarter approach to legal research. Law Street’s industry-by-industry approach keeps the focus of news stories on clients. For more information, follow Law Street Media on Twitter @LawStreetMedia or visit http://www.lawstreetmedia.com.

About Fastcase
Fastcase is a leading legal publisher that democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Fastcase is a comprehensive research suite of primary law, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news. Founded in 1999, the service has more than 900,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C.