Their departure from Law360 came amid a staff decision to unionise, with employees upset that the company’s growth had not led to better working conditions. Fledgling commercial law newswire hits the inboxes … Former editors of Law360 in the US set-up shop in Melbourne … Rough end to the New York experience amid staff decision to unionise over allegations of “mercurial management style ” and crushing workloads … Decision to let Lawyerly “speak for itself”
Lawyerly is the most recently arrived law publisher on the block, launched earlier this year by Cat Fredenburgh and Christine Caulfield.
The aim is to deliver snappy updates on commercial litigation in much the same way the two women provided when they ran LexisNexis’ Law360 news service in the US.
Fredenburgh and Caulfield, who are personal as well as being professional partners, were Law360’s editor-in-chief and co-managing editor respectively.
They left their former employer in May 2016. According to Politico, sources inside the publishing company said that the pair were “escorted out of the newsroom by HR”.
Their departure from Law360 came amid a staff decision to unionise, with employees upset that the company’s growth had not led to better working conditions.
The News Guild of New York said that five days before staff voted to join the union, Cat and Christine were fired, “… a move employees saw as a dramatic effort by management to show that it was ready to make changes if they rejected the guild”.
Law360 employees said:
“We also stand against unilateral changes to our healthcare and other benefits, a mercurial management style, and an overwhelming quota-based workload that leads to a poor work-life balance and questionable editorial priorities.”
The Huffington Post reported that as part of a campaign to avert unionisation, LexisNexis retained anti-union advisers from top-tier US labour law firm Jackson Lewis.
Journalist Peter Sterne tweeted:
“Based on conversations with Law360 sources, it doesn’t sound like Cat & Christine are out b/c they supported the union … Rather, it’s a concession to employees unhappy with their leadership. Corporate is saying, ‘we listen to you, so you don’t need a union’.”
Law360 EIC Cat Fredenburgh and co-managing editor Christine Caulfield were escorted out of the newsroom today. https://t.co/SkfZo740P0
— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) August 5, 2016
The two editors moved to Melbourne, Caulfield’s hometown, and created the Lawyerly masthead. We had been told by a source that the New York based media entrepreneur Marius Meland was a backer of the startup in Australia.
He was the founder of Law360 and after eight years sold it to LexisNexis. Before that he had been a reporter and an editor at Forbes and earlier still at Dow Jones newswires.
Meland currently is CEO of a “competitive intelligence” company called Inside.FYI. In an email dated November 8, Caufield denied that Meland is an investor.
A Lawyerly subscription will set a single user back $12 a week, or over $600 a year with GST. The prices rise to $1,800 a month for 50 users.
The aim is to attract as many well-heeled law firms and corporate counsel as possible with coverage of “high stakes commercial litigation, class actions and enforcement cases”.
The company recently advertised for a Federal and Supreme Court reporter with one to three years experience to be based in Sydney and filing two to three stories every day.
We know of one well-versed reporter who was offered $30 an hour by Lawyerly with the expectation of filing multiple daily reports.
The staffer in Sydney is Miklos Bolza, who has three years reporting experience and also described himself as a “content marketer”.
The stories are mainly sourced from the Federal Court, which provides judgments, schedules and notifications. Lawyerly delivers its content as a daily newswire via email and Twitter feed.
The publication’s promotional spiel says that Fredenburgh and Caulfield grew the Law360 newsroom from 10 full time reporters to over 100 scribes in more than 10 locations.
The web-based publication looks like a useful entrant into the field of company and commercial court reporting and a brave effort by its hardworking editors.
However, Justinian’s inquiries were not welcome. We asked Fredenburgh and Caulfield for an interview and to fact check details for this story. Originally, Caulfield said that sounded like a good idea, but rang back to say she had discussed our request with Fredenburgh and they decided to decline the invitation. A case of the Cat getting Christine’s tongue?