I have lately been puzzling over the fact that LexisNexis has through acquisition and alliance, built a virtual monopoly on legal news (Law360. ALM, Wall Street Journal, MLex, Newsdesk). Now here’s the irony their main competitors Thomson Reuters Westlaw and BloombergBNA are both owned by news companies! Both companies also publish legal news. 
BloombergBNA has a serious newsletter business and TR has a variety of newsy publications and alerts – but neither has made a dent in the Lexis dominance of what I would call “water cooler” legal news. I can’t help but wonder if Lexblog’s free news service aggregating the expertise of the legal community might create be the disruptor. Lexblog was founded in 2004 by Kevin O’Keefe. He recently hired attorney and news veteran Bob Ambrogi as Editor in Chief of Lexblog. I plan to stay tuned. Here is the press release:
LexBlog Launches Global Legal News and Commentary Platform
Seattle, Wash.—Sept. 10, 2018—LexBlog today launched a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, global news
and commentary network, delivering timely and targeted articles from legal bloggers throughout the
world. Any legal blogger is invited to add a feed to the network, and any reader is free to access the
network, with no subscription or payment required.
Some 19,000 legal bloggers already participate in the network, which features both curated and
real-time posts from lawyers, law professors, law librarians, law students, legal-industry executives, legal
marketers, legal consultants, legal technologists and others, providing news, insights and analysis on
virtually every legal and practice topic.
Powering the network is LexBlog’s custom-built syndication engine that allows it to aggregate blog
content from any source, regardless of whether the blog is hosted by LexBlog on its own blogging
platform or externally on any other blogging platform.
Any legal blog hosted by LexBlog is automatically included, and any other legal blogger can add a blog to
the network, at no cost, by registering the blog’s RSS feed at: www.lexblog.com/join.
“At a time when other legal news sites are reducing coverage and erecting paywalls, we’re providing an
alternative that is free to use, constantly updated, and expansive in coverage,” said Kevin O’Keefe,
LexBlog’s founder and CEO. “Legal bloggers are the citizen journalists of law and our network is bringing
their work to the readers who will most benefit from it.”
The network includes:
● Featured articles curated by LexBlog editors throughout the day.
● Real-time feeds of all articles from member blogs across the world.
● Real-time feeds of targeted articles arranged by legal channels.
● RSS and email subscriptions to channel and blog updates.
● Profiles of each blogger, including the blogs to which they contribute and their recent posts.
● Profiles of the law firms and institutions that publish blogs, including all the blogs they support, all their blog authors, and the recent posts from across all their blogs.
Content published through the network receives additional exposure through publication to the
Fastcase legal research service and through bar association publishing portals.
“The wealth of original writing and reporting from legal blogs is staggering,” said Robert Ambrogi,
LexBlog’s publisher and editor-in-chief. “For legal professionals, there is immeasurable value in having
unlimited access to timely articles targeted to their practices and interests.”
Today’s launch is just the first phase of the new LexBlog.com. Future plans include greater curation of
channel pages, expanded original content and coverage, and special-focus publications. In addition,
LexBlog will license and deploy its syndication and aggregation platform to law firms, bar associations,
law schools and other organizations to power their own custom publishing.
About LexBlog
Founded in 2004 to empower lawyers to increase their visibility and accelerate their business
relationships through blogging, LexBlog today is the hub that brings together many of the best legal
minds on the web. Its platform powers more than 19,000 legal bloggers and over half of the nearly 1,000
blogs published by the 200 largest U.S. firms.
Contact:
Robert Ambrogi
Publisher and editor-in-chief Founder and CEO
bob@lexblog.com kevin@lexblog.com
(978) 317-0972 (206) 340-8204