Since its 2006 launch, irreverent blog Above The Law has built a huge audience and given voice to an increasingly embittered community of US associates and law students. Legal Business reports on the ‘tabloid’ that brought transparency to the world’s largest legal market.
One afternoon in February 2009, the leader of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s corporate and securities practice, Robert Robbins, made a phone call in a train carriage on route from Washington to New York Penn station.
If you were charged with helping to run a major law firm there was plenty to discuss. Lehman Brothers had collapsed less than six months previously, triggering an international banking crisis and ushering in the sharpest contraction seen in Western legal markets for at least 60 years.
Law firms were queuing up to make deep job cuts at an unprecedented level in the world’s largest legal market and Pillsbury was no exception. Robbins discussed the firm’s plan to lay off as many as 20 lawyers, including several associates with low billable hours who might be on the target list.
The veteran lawyer presumably believed his conversation would remain private but it wasn’t to be. Tipped off by a law student passenger on the train, the conversation would be made very public in a self-styled ‘legal tabloid’ that was about to break into the profession’s consciousness. The resulting story on the blog Above The Law (ATL) – under the headline ‘A funny thing happened on the way to New York (or: Pillsbury associates, brace yourself)’ – recounted in conversational style the core facts – including advice that law firms take lessons in confidentiality from the TV show Gossip Girl – and added in a subsequent update confirmation of Pillsbury’s intention to cut staff.
The article, published on 19 February, garnered huge traffic, attracting more than 400 comments and going a fair way towards putting ATL – which had been founded by attorney David Lat less than three years previously – on the legal map.
The story was a perfect mix for ATL: revealing hard facts about a law firm’s governance, quirky details regarding the circumstances of disclosure and illustrating the irreverent site’s ability to bring fresh transparency to the hitherto usually hidden lot of associate life in BigLaw US.
There were to be many more announcements of job cuts in the weeks ahead and ATL proved itself increasingly able to break real-time news as a large audience of law firm staffers fed in tips and internal memos. The site has gone on to build a very substantial audience – reaching as many as 900,000 unique users a month – on this quirky mix of news, comment and gossip. Major US law firms – generally less used to transparency and disclosure than UK equivalents – have often been left confused, resentful and scrabbling to keep up.
Lat comments: ‘When I initially started ATL, I had the intention of it serving as a kind of virtual water cooler for the profession. I didn’t have a sense of just how popular it was going to become and how much of an influence it would have.’
Bruce MacEwen, president of consultancy Adam Smith, Esq and a keen watcher of the US legal profession, agrees that the site has secured an influential position in the industry: ‘ATL provides required reading. Senior management at firms need to be aware of what is going on under their noses.’
Greedy for information
If ATL was to build a huge audience for a new form of legal reportage mixing social media, comment and humour, there had been previous indications of both the rising influence of the internet on the industry and the pent-up demand for information focused on associates and law students.
The late 1990s’ dot-com boom had given birth to Greedy Associates, a series of US message boards that shared information about associate salaries and bonuses, thrown in with a mix of industry news, humour, gossip and outright bitching. The boards were in 2000 arguably instrumental in stoking and then rapidly spreading an associate pay war from California’s then-booming legal market to New York and then to London within a matter of weeks. The once opaque national and regional labour exchange for associates was being opened up, creating a global market for associates where what Manhattan law firms paid their first years had a demonstrable impact in the Square Mile.
Greedy Associates was to soon fall from fashion but it was an influence in the 2000 launch in London of RollOnFriday, which operates a broadly comparable mix of news, social media and commentary targeted at junior lawyers in the City.
But while the US had fostered a vibrant legal blogging scene during the 2000s, ATL was not to launch until 2006. In the meantime, its future founder Lat was toiling as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey.
The Yale-educated lawyer was looking for outlets for his writing bug and initially came to prominence of a sort after he began blogging under the name Article III Groupie (A3G), for the popular judicial gossip blog Underneath Their Robes in 2004. Lat deployed a distinctive voice as the boozy debutant A3G who wrote about work habits and legal idiosyncrasies, including the ‘superhotties of the federal judiciary’ and ‘bodacious babes of the bench’.
The urge to write was certainly not due to a lack of aptitude for law. Lat’s career credentials were impressive having previously clerked for Court of Appeals Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain and worked as a litigation associate at Wall Street leader Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Lat revealed his identity in an interview in The New Yorker in November 2005. ‘I pretended to be a woman, largely to cover my tracks. But as time went on, I embraced the character of A3G. Many readers believed A3G to be a woman, but some suspected the writer was male… so I voluntarily revealed myself.’
Lat stopped working on the site to retain his job but missed writing. At the beginning of 2006, he left his legal post to write for the political blog Wonkette.
In August 2006, Lat launched ATL for the website network Breaking Media as its sole employee. It was initially slow going. Legal blogging was heavily focused on case law and the courts – there was little precedent for an online blog tackling the industry news that was the preserve of The American Lawyer and its sister titles.
Still, even in the early years, the site was garnering 15,000 hits on a good day – a respectable audience, illustrating a hunger for a new kind of coverage targeted at lawyers at the coalface, rather than partners.
Lat was named managing editor in July 2008. ATL looked to bring in its second writer in typically idiosyncratic form: it ran an American Idol-style talent search and left it to readers to vote for which candidate they liked the best, leading to the appointment of former Debevoise & Plimpton associate Elie Mystal in 2009.
There would be plenty for the team to write about as wave after wave of law firms announced major job cuts in the first half of 2009 and the site’s crowd-sourced model of news-gathering came to the fore.
‘Our traffic grew dramatically during 2009 and 2010 as we covered the struggles of large law firms during the great recession, which included layoffs, pay freezes and cuts and law firm bankruptcies,’ recalls Lat.
ATL’s scoops originate largely from its readers, mostly law school students and associates. Once ATL receives the tip-off, the writers probe their sources at the relative firms for further information.
‘A lot of times we hear things from sources and when we approach the firm, the story is very different. Other times we challenge firms with the story at the time and firms do say, “Don’t run this”, but they don’t dispute the story so we go ahead,’ says Lat.
Lat regularly receives a vast array of e-mails, texts and calls and sometimes will have photographs of contracts or important on-screen information sent over.
He says: ‘Law firms have to use some form of internal communication so it’s about tapping into this. Sometimes lawyers will forward internal memos or send pictures or transcribe a voicemail.’
John Quinn, founding and managing partner at leading litigation practice Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, says he likes the site: ‘It’s amusing with idiosyncratic views. It serves a function. I don’t find it offensive and they have embarrassed us a number of times. They have all kinds of scoops everywhere and they don’t publish anything that is client confidential – that would be unethical and, as far as I know, that has not happened.’
The site has now evolved to feature as many as 12 blogs a day, with ATL having a sizeable roster of external contributors in addition to its editorial staff, which is now comprised of four full-time writers.
Skirting controversy
There is no doubt that ATL has marked out very different territory to conventional legal publications, with the site often carrying outrageous stories. Recent sample such as the piece about a woman videoing herself using sex toys in Cornell University law library (including redacted pictures) and a report on a deposition breaking down when a partner bizarrely sent a string of abusive e-mails to opposing counsel (‘pansy’ was one of the more polite names thrown around).
Aside from school-yard humour, it has a good eye for pathos and the angsty nuance of associate life in a competitive economy in which the old career certainties have been wiped away. One story recounts the resignation e-mail of an associate at Clifford Chance, which detailed the punishing daily routine of a working mother in Big Law, from 4am to 1.30am. (sample: ‘7.00am: Find some clean clothes for the kids, get them dressed. 7.30am: Realize that I am still in my pajamas and haven’t showered so pull hair back in a ponytail and throw on a suit… 10am: Team meeting; leave with a 50-item to-do list… 11.30pm: Wake up and realize I fell asleep at my desk; make more coffee; get through task number 3’).
Not everyone gets the joke. In 2009 an academic sued ATL for $22m in damages in relation to numerous posts the site carried about his arrest for suspected solicitation. The suit was later voluntarily abandoned.
Another lawsuit to hit the website involved a Chicago attorney who sued ATL for $50m in 2011 after claiming ATL portrayed him as a sexual offender.
Again, Lat refuses to comment on the pending litigation but does say that in almost seven years of existence, ATL has never had to pay a settlement or judgment to any plaintiff.
Another issue for some are the reader comments on the site, which often move into the realm of vitriolic abuse. In response ATL has made it harder to post comments without registering.
Lat himself comes across as a curious figure to sit at the heart of such controversy. A scrupulously polite and thoughtful individual, he maintains a controlled detachment somewhat at odds with the anarchic edge ATL is known for. A natural networker with a quick mind, Lat is also a regular blogger on Twitter, where he has personally amassed around 10,000 followers.
That ATL has been able to maintain and build some engagement with the profession comes in part because the site has a strong sense of the legal community and is written by people with a clear recognition of the at-the-coalface realities of law never covered in a law firm recruiting brochure.
Lat’s previous interview with The New Yorker on his early blogging, would give some indication of the oxymoronic formula ATL would successfully apply: ‘The blog reflects two aspects of my personality. I am very interested in serious legal issues as well as fun and frivolous and gossipy issues. I can go from Harvard Law Review to Us Weekly very quickly.’
By the same token, ATL’s launch was timely in allowing it to tap into disillusion with life as an associate in a turbulent economy where the chances to make partner are dwindling and anger over what many see as profiteering of law schools in churning out debt-laden graduates into a gloomy jobs market.
Brill’s footsteps
Another interesting aspect of ATL’s impact is the extent to which it has brought transparency to a conservative US legal profession still unused to outside scrutiny. As such, the site has been compared to the initial impact of The American Lawyer, which was set up in 1979 by the iconoclastic journalist-cum-entrepreneur Steven Brill, then still in his 20s.
Under the hard-nosed Brill, AmLaw would send a jolt through the legal profession, then shocked at the concept of journalists reporting on law firms as businesses, as the title quickly established itself through the 1980s.
The original incarnation of AmLaw was hard-edged and provocative – with the restless and well-connected Brill revelling in his role in shaking up the hide-bound legal industry. For all the shock it provoked, AmLaw quickly became required reading.
In 1989, Brill founded Court TV, a news network that depicted the justice system from a juror’s perspective. Brill sold his shares in both Court TV and AmLaw’s publishing parent in 1997. His departure has seen AmLaw evolve into a well-established publication but also a considerably more conservative title. There has also been an undoubted challenge in adapting AmLaw’s feature-driven journalism to the fast-paced world of online media.
John Quinn comments: ‘AmLaw focuses on hard news but I rarely see a feature story that I would be interested in. ATL on the other hand is about what goes on inside of firms such as what firms are paying what and bonuses. It’s amusing.’
As such, some question if ATL – and the rise of blogging – has taken on some of the mantle of the early AmLaw in challenging the profession and its self-image, with Lat as a modern counter-point to Brill. Though poles apart in personal style, both share creativity, an individualistic streak and an eye for a commercial angle.
This impression was reinforced in a 2009 interview between Lat and Brill, which was posted on YouTube in which the pair discuss the profession, ethics and publishing.
It has to be said that ATL’s provocative style and humour has grated with some in the profession. Brill – who has gone on to set up a number of ventures outside the law and earlier this year wrote a high-profile in-depth investigation for Time magazine on spiralling health care costs – argues that the site needs to bring in more discipline to use its platform to the full. He comments: ‘ATL is a wasted opportunity. It could be so much more than what it is. It is written for bitter and unhappy law students – like a juvenile with a chip on its shoulder.’
Brill reflects: ‘AmLaw did a little bit of what ATL represents – we used to do the summer associate survey – but it consists of real nuts and bolts reporting about the business of being a lawyer or the career opportunities associated with being a young lawyer, which is what they [ATL] should be doing. We shook up the industry with real reporting, not with snide comments about how people look or what their apartments and houses are like.’
Lat comments: ‘I have great admiration for The American Lawyer, and I’m flattered to be mentioned in the same sentence. It’s certainly fair to say that we cover many things that AmLaw covers, such as law firm business. But we cover other areas as well, such as legal education, and we also cover some edgier fare that they would probably steer clear of today.’
Turning influence into dollars
Having built a huge audience, the question facing ATL – as with many online and social media ventures – is how to turn a large, but often casual and potentially fickle audience into a sustainable and profitable business model.
The history of such ventures shows they can easily fall from favour and struggle to withstand the departure of charismatic founders – a danger for the site given Lat’s profile.
One obvious question is whether ATL can or should try to charge its readers for its well-informed blogging.
‘ATL’s audience is essentially law students and associates – young people – and I’m not sure that they would want to pay for ATL – that would be tough,’ Quinn says.
There could also be a debate over the extent that ATL has direct ownership of the news it produces, which flows naturally from its community-driven ethos.
Lat says ATL has no current plans to charge for access but says the site is exploring new revenue streams, such as adding sponsored events, a newsletter product that is free for readers but sponsored by advertisers, a mobile app and even selling products through the site.
‘Last year was a record year for revenue, 2013 should be even stronger and ATL is now profitable. But there are no guarantees,’ says Lat.
One way the site is currently looking to evolve is through the launch earlier this year of a top 50 US law school ranking, based on criteria ATL’s team has devised, including factors like employment data and large firm placements.
The move pitches ATL against the influential and controversial research by news magazine US News & World Report, which is frequently criticised for encouraging law schools to try to game their rankings. It is certainly a major project for the site that could herald a move into producing more resource and reference material (in typically self-critical style, ATL wrote a blog picking holes in its own methodology).
There is also a consensus that ATL is moving to tone down some of the more outrageous aspects of its writing and has taken a more conservative line on sourcing in recent years – though it remains pretty near the bone.
Janet Stanton, partner at Adam Smith, Esq, says: ‘ATL started out hilariously as a gossipy site but now it is growing up and becoming more serious. They are trying to address a wider audience that’s more than just law students and associates. It’s bringing out other services like the law school rankings, which is good for the industry, but Lat has still kept his edge.’
Lat concedes the style of the site has changed: ‘Before, we had more humour but we have evolved in a different direction – we are more serious now.’
That maturity came to the fore during the dramatic implosion last year of Dewey & LeBoeuf, with ATL being one of the most proactive and effective reporters of the world’s largest ever legal collapse.
It is a tricky balance to manage, though the clubbable Lat seems singularly well suited to reconcile the engaged and the controversial.
Lat himself takes a philosophical and pragmatic view of ATL’s prospects. ‘It’s hard to say what the future holds, considering how quickly the worlds of both law and media are changing. All I can say is that we hope to continue entertaining and enlightening our many readers for years to come.’ LB
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk