Legal News

Law Blog Obituary: Legal Times

By Ashby Jones

We got a touch of sad news from the world of law and journalism today; one of our favorite publications, Legal Times — which focuses on all things legal in Washington, D.C. — is going away. We’ve been reassured, however, that much of Legal Times’s coverage will continue to exist, folded into the National Law Journal. Both publications are owned by privately held Incisive Media. Here’s the story, from one of our favorite legal blogs, the Legal Times’s own BLT.

According to the BLT, at a staff meeting in Washington, Legal Times’s editor-in-chief David Brown and the NLJ’s publisher, Stephen Lincoln cited two main factors in the decision to merge the newspapers: declining revenue as a result of the recession and the fact that Washington news is often considered to be national news.

We were heartened to hear, however, that Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro and NLJ Washington correspondent Marcia Coyle — whose dispatches on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer are always interesting and impressive — will stay on with the combined publication.

Brown and Lincoln said they expect the merger to result eventually in a smaller staff. No layoffs were announced today.

We wish the team good luck during the combination and look forward to blogging stories from the new NLJ.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 16, 2009 (boomark / email).