How Law360’s reporting, data and analysis keep readers in the know

In the legal profession, information is key to success, which is why every morning 2.7m legal professionals wake up to Law360, the most-used legal news source in America.

Atlanta-based law firm, Taylor English Duma knows how important it is for their lawyers to stay up-to-date on daily legal developments, and why it purchased a Law360 subscription all its lawyers can access. Michael Cicero, a partner at the firm who specializes in advising clients on intellectual property matters, relies heavily on Law360’s daily newsletters to stay on top of developments in patent, trademark and copyright law across the federal courts.

“One of the first things I do every morning before I start on any billable client work is to open up my email and look for that morning’s edition of IP Law360,” says Cicero. “I especially like that it is presented in a very efficient way to my email inbox every morning. That is crucial for lawyers in private practice who need to quickly zero in on the topics that are most important to them.”

George Gaskin, a partner in the firm’s M&A department, uses Law360 each morning to track legislative developments that might affect his work. “It’s keeping abreast of what’s going on,” he says. “Law360 is something I look at every day.”

Law360’s coverage is vast, spanning across more than 60 industries, jurisdictions and legal practice areas and publishing more than 200 stories a day. The weeks between updates have turned into days, hours and minutes. Through a combination of AI and proprietary algorithms that monitor court filings, regulatory actions, and other legal developments as they happen, Law360 journalists can quickly identify and report on breaking news stories, often before other news outlets are able to do so.

“All day long, we are looking through court dockets and press releases, talking to sources and making sure we’re up on what’s going on,” explains Ian Thoms, managing editor at Law360.

"It’s certainly a boon for us,” says Melissa Lipman, London bureau chief at Law360. “That’s allowed us to dig in and do a lot more litigation coverage than when the only way to get materials or find out what was going on was to turn up in court or have a lawyer tell us they’d filed a lawsuit.”

News is tailored to readers’ interests and delivered to their inbox before their workday even begins, giving readers immediate news and insights from the moment they open their email.

Over 80,000 readers visit Law360.com every day, including Kevin Covert, vice president and deputy general counsel of Honeywell. To Covert, Law360 is "the legal equivalent of a stock ticker. It is the first email I open every morning, and I check it for updates at least two or three times throughout the day."

Journalist Tom Fish, a recent recruit, works in the London office of Law360. Every morning, he grabs a coffee, arrives promptly at his office and reviews the headlines from the day’s newspapers, wires and court and litigation activities. For a general-assignment reporter, this is nothing unusual. However, the work is very different from his previous journalistic assignments. While he covers everything from policy shifts to financial fraud and workplace injustices, all his stories have a clear point of focus: their implications for the law and the legal sector.

Law360 covers developments in everything from intellectual property to bankruptcy, employment, competition and securities law. And at a time when media companies are shrinking and newsrooms are shedding jobs, Law360 is something of an outlier. Through a largely subscription-based model (with limited advertising for pre-subscriber content), the publication is expanding rapidly. “Oh yes, we’re hiring!” says Thoms.

Driving this is an ever-expanding roster of newsletters, along with regional growth. “We were one of the few places hiring during the pandemic,” says Amber McKinney, managing editor at Law360. “We are in a privileged position to be a successful media company that’s expanding.”

This came as a surprise to Fish. When considering leaving his previous publication, he was unsure whether it was wise to put himself at the mercy of an employment market that, for journalists, looked far from favorable. “I didn’t think that jobs like this – with security, a generous living wage and wonderful perks – existed,” he says.

As an expanding media company continually hiring new reporters, it needs to ensure everyone can get up to speed rapidly in a highly technical field. While new reporters quickly build up knowledge of the law, they have rich resources to turn to: the intellectual and technological heft of the publication’s owner, LexisNexis Legal & Professional, part of RELX, which acquired Law360 in 2012.

“We're in a nice position in that we are an independent company within the LexisNexis universe, and we have control over our editorial, so you get unbiased journalism,” explains McKinney. “But the bonus is that we can share resources with sister companies.”

One example is legal analytics provider Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company that uses natural language processing to interpret text and legal text classification technology to classify and make searchable cases, dockets, entities, patents and case outcomes. With access to the LexisNexis databases, Lex Machina can analyze many different sources of information and provide insights that would otherwise be out of reach.

These resources are freely available to Law360's 170 reporters, editors and news assistants. Moreover, whenever Lex Machina launches a new report, Law360 can access it ahead of time, cover the findings in features and news stories and have reporters talk to attorneys working in the field to get feedback on the research. “Those synergies help us have the most relevant stories,” says McKinney.

“We’re always trying to find new ways to reach subscribers that makes their workflow easier,” says McKinney. She cites a Law360 podcast called Pro Say (a pun on the Latin legal term pro se, referring to people who represent themselves in court). In the weekly show, hosts McKinney and her colleagues Alex Lawson and Hailey Konnath cover newsworthy stories and legal sector developments through discussions with expert guests. “What it really does is give our subscribers and anyone who doesn’t know Law360 a chance to hear about some of our journalism in a new format,” she says.

Growth at Law360 is happening on several fronts. In 2022, its journalists wrote and published more than 55,000 news and analysis articles. In 2021, the company launched Law360 Pulse, a news service covering the business of law. Most days, Pulse stories are "the most read" stories of the day and together with the practice of law sections and coverage, provide the complete picture of the legal industry.

“Staying informed is vital to providing clients with timely and effective counsel and developing successful business strategies," says Rachel Travers, vice president of Law360 and a former attorney herself. She notes that this shift in approach underscores the importance of staying informed about the latest developments in the law and the legal industry. "Legal news has taken on a leading role in the workflow of attorneys, with legal professionals now turning to news first before conducting their research," she says.

This year, the company is aiming to keep the growth up in four key areas: investing more in content and quick delivery, tighter integration with other legal workflow tools, exclusive surveys and rankings, and international expansion.

For the most part, this growth means faster, more comprehensive news and analysis for readers, and greater financial success for Law360. However, it has one goal for which success is not measured in rising subscriber numbers or increases in revenue: strengthening the rule of law around the world.

In contributing to this goal, Law360 joins its parent LexisNexis Legal & Professional and its LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation in marshaling resources to help close the gap in access to justice, something some 5bn people around the world still lack.

The benefits of the rule of law to global development are manifold. A rule of law impact tracker created by LexisNexis Legal & Professional has found compelling correlations between a stronger rule of law and, for example, falling levels of corruption and homicide, increased life expectancy and lower child mortality.

In promoting the rule of law, of course, journalism is one of society’s most powerful forces. “It’s a great cause to rally behind,” says McKinney. “But it’s also perfectly aligned with what the company does. We are the experts in what it takes to promote the rule of law around the world.”

Law360 staff contribute in several ways, from fellowships promoting ethnic equality across the US legal system, to tracking the biggest gaps in the rule of law and highlighting pro bono legal initiatives that help some of the world’s most resource-poor communities gain access to the courts in its Access to Justice section that is free of charge.

With a small group of reporters as regular contributors, anyone at Law360 who has an idea for a story is encouraged to pitch it to the newsletter’s editors. “A lot of great journalism has come out of that,” says McKinney. “And it’s been very successful in holding up that end of our rule-of-law mission, because disseminating information is really the best service we can offer.”

For Law360 journalists, being part of a media group that is in the midst of global expansion and enables its staff to combine legal reporting with stories that have tangible social impact is a compelling proposition.

“At a time when so many big regional newspapers have been folding, the opportunity to be part of a newsroom that’s never not been growing has been remarkable,” says Lipman.

“I still can’t believe my luck,” Fish says. “[Law360] is by far the best, by any metric you care to mention.”