From Gawker:

Earlier this month, American Lawyer Media laid off 42 staffers across the board. The company is also "scaling back" plans to expand the scope of one magazine, and moving another to an all-digital format, according to an internal memo. One insider says all of the laid off people are gone, but a sense of nervousness still pervades the office.

And from Folio:

Ever since British acquisition firm Incisive Media purchased U.S.-based ALM last July for $630, it seemed that the Apax Partners subsidiary was on the fast track, quickly evolving from an entrepreneurial startup to b-to-b powerhouse.

Now, it seems there is some apprehension from inside-mostly about revenues. Is the legal market not as recession-proof as once thought?

Earlier this month, ALM slashed 47 jobs across the board. The company apparently is scaling back plans to grow Real Estate Media's Florida publication into a monthly magazine and is shifting Law Firm, Inc. from a print to online only.

Both Gawker and Folio reference CEO Bill Pollak's internal memo:

Folks,

Several weeks ago, I wrote to you about our business results for the first quarter of 2008 and shared some of the challenges we face as a result of the credit squeeze and other market factors. I also described our intention to tighten our belts and reduce costs. With no change in sight on the economic horizon, the senior management team and I have spent the past few weeks examining our business options. Our goal was to find solutions that would lower expenses without compromising quality, and which would allow us to continue to invest in and meet our long term business goals. In particular, we all strongly agree on the need to continue investing in our Web infrastructure, while expanding ALM's ability to generate and publish content online.

We looked at each business with these questions in mind: Are we getting the right return on our investment? Do we need to keep doing this work? Can we do this work another way? We believe that while we are primarily doing the right work in the right way, there are changes we need to make immediately to respond to economic conditions.

Some of these changes involve revising the timing or scope of planned initiatives. Others, however, are staff related and go beyond simply delaying the filling of open jobs. In total, we have decided to eliminate forty-two current positions across ALM and Incisive's US operations. These staff reductions are distributed across businesses, locations and job levels and all the employees involved have already been notified.

The business changes we will be making are also broad in scope. These include scaling back plans to grow Real Estate Media's Florida publication into a monthly magazine; closing down the Operations Department of Incisive's Norwalk, CT. office; and shifting Law Firm, Inc. from a print magazine to a digital product.

Another change in business strategy - and the one that will have the greatest impact on staff - is our decision to restructure ALM's Event Division and reassign management responsibility for many of our existing SRI conferences to Insight in Canada, Incisive's Events group in London and ALM's Legal Publishing Division. A number of SRI's financial events will be eliminated.

Accepting and working through change is never easy, and changes that affect our colleagues and friends can be particularly painful. We did not make these decisions lightly. But we know that our future success depends on our ability to align ourselves with our markets and clients, and to ensure we have the resources we need to develop and grow our brands. The changes announced today will not only help us during the current economic turbulence, but will make us stronger in the future.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note at
[Redacted].

Bill

ALM has some talented and passionate reporters, editors, and management folks - one of whom is Pollak. But as with the journalism industry in general placing greater weight on online media, there are going to be changes.

Added to that is Incisive Media's footprint. Incisive is a fast growing digital information provider doing some innovative things. With innovation will come change.

Expect ALM to be a force in legal publishing at the end of the day. But with digital gaining on print, things will just be much different.

Bill, who has been with the company since it's formation and currently serves as their CEO, brings a unique understanding of legal publishing to the table. In our e-mail exchange, he offers his perspectives on the current state of legal publishing, the ALM's use of technology at their website, and how he thinks ALM will fare in a world where traditional publications are continuing to fall by the wayside. See the full text in it's usual location (after the jump).

1. Rob La Gatta: When you started with ALM (at a time the Internet was still quite young), did you ever imagine the web would have had as profound an impact on your business as it has thus far?

William Pollak: All of my 1998 assumptions about the web have turned out to be wrong. Of course we all knew that we were witnessing the start of a new medium, and that certain parts of our predominantly print franchises would be jeopardized by the web. But the idea of user-generated content in all its many forms, and the revolution that that would bring to the dissemination of information, was far from being on my radar 10 years ago.

The idea that we newspaper and magazine publishers would originate our content electronically before or instead of putting it into our print publications was also not foreseen by most of us. And the idea that this new medium would not only eat into our historical revenue base but also open up dramatic new opportunities—things like webinars and new kinds of directories and blog networks—well, we didn’t see those coming 10 years ago either.

That being said, I should say that I’m also amazed at how little the web has impacted other parts of our business. For instance, powerful print brands remain powerful even in the electronic world, and have not really been supplanted by web upstarts. And law firms, by and large, continue to market themselves in much the same way as they have always marketed themselves.

Individual lawyers may have launched blogs and other initiatives to market their own expertise, but few firms have figured out how to use the web to extend their brands, generate leads and build their businesses. And, to give a third example, information may be more available for free via Google and the web than ever before, but West and Lexis remain healthy and vibrant businesses, just as they were 10 years ago. So we need to be careful not to overstate the impact of this admittedly powerful medium.

2. Rob La Gatta: Can you provide some insight on when ALM decided to begin incorporating RSS feeds onto Law.com, and what prompted this addition? Any information about the number of subscribers?

William Pollak: We began to incorporate RSS feeds around 5 years ago, as we learned the value of pushing our content out to other websites and RSS readers. Although we have no good measure of the number of RSS subscribers, or the traffic they generate back to our sites, our sense is that they have become an important source of traffic for us.

3. Rob La Gatta: What must a blogger do to get their blog included in your Blog Network?

William Pollak: Blogs are selected for our Blog Network in much the same way that outside columnists are chosen for our newspapers.

We look, first and foremost, at the quality of what’s being posted, the frequency and seriousness with which the blogger seems to take their blog, and our judgment of the value being potentially provided to our readers. Given our current list of blogs, we look for new offerings which will fill niches and add to our overall coverage. Right now we are particularly focused on finding blogs which cover the international business and practice of law, for example. And, of course, we look at the traffic which a new blog would likely bring to our network and to our advertisers—generally speaking, more traffic is better than less.

4. Rob La Gatta: What do you think is in store for ALM's print publications, in a time so when many newspapers and magazines are fading away? Is ALM is equipped to weather the storm?

William Pollak: Our newspapers are thriving and, I suspect, will continue to do well in the years to come. We are in the process of reinventing what a legal newspaper should be, and increasingly recognize that they are less about “news” and have become much more important for the court and legal information which they provide. We continue to gather and publish, both in print and online, a wide array of decisions, decision summaries, verdicts, court rules, calendars and the like. And many readers tell us that print is still their preferred means of receiving that information even while more and more of it becomes available from us online.

Magazines are somewhat more challenged, since most lack the element of “must have” information that one finds in a legal newspaper. I believe our magazines need to do much more to build their brands online, and turn themselves from monthly providers of feature stories and surveys into daily providers of community news and information. That will not be an easy transition, but I think we are strong enough to see it through.

As you may know, ALM was acquired last summer by Incisive Media in London. Through that acquisition, we have gained access to dramatically improved web technology and a team of experienced business-to-business publishers who are well-ahead of us in their transition to online publishing. As we now upgrade to new content management tools and other capabilities, I think you will see that ALM has the resources needed to succeed in the electronic age.

5. Rob La Gatta: In your eyes, what has been the most valuable impact the Internet has had upon the legal profession so far, and why?

William Pollak: The biggest impact of the web in the publishing industry has been to level the field separating journalists from readers.

In the pre-web era the paradigm was simple—editors figured out what was important, presented it to the reader, and the reader took it in. Now, there is much more back-and-forth, and much more user participation in the process of news gathering and analysis. Journalists may still be subject-matter experts on various topics, and their voice may be one which readers still want to hear. But the journalist now has to listen and react to users in a more direct way, and can no longer assume that their word will be the last heard on a given topic.

That’s an important and, I think, welcome change. It expands dramatically the amount of content available to include in—or link to—a given story. And I think it has the potential to build a much tighter bond between publishers and readers.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Mario Sundar, community evangelist and blog editor for LinkedIn [4.24.08]
• Kevin Livingston & Dennis Pfaff, the editorial team behind Thelen's Climate Law Update [4.17.08]
• Anita Campbell, editor-in-chief of Small Business Trends [4.15.08]
• Steve Matthews of Stem Legal, discussing the state of the Canadian legal blogosphere [4.11.08]
• John Sirman, manager of TexasBar.com and technology editor for the Texas Bar Journal [4.10.08]

Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.

Bob Norman of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times is reporting that American Lawyer Media (ALM), which owns The American Lawyer magazine and legal newspapers nationwide, announced last week in a memo from CEO William L. Pollak to staff that it is laying off 42 employees nationwide. This amounts to about four percent of its workforce.

Trimming 4% of the employees from any organization over 50 is probably healthy. But it may be a sign of things to come as Incisive Media, ALM's owner, brings to the forefront its new media bent.

Per Robert Niles at USC's Online Journalism Review:

News publishers like to point to television, free news online, English literacy rates and slew of other reasons to explain their readership losses. But the contempt that newspapers show for their readers by burying their editorial content beneath their remaining advertising surely is not helping keep readers around.

Everyday I check the website of the Pasadena Star-News. And every day, the front section of the website's homepage is obscured by a pop-up widget urging me to take a survey about the site's new design. Click the red 'X' in the corner to close the widget window, and the op-up appears every time you return to the page. (If you click the button declining to take the survey, the window disappears for the remainder of your session.)

If I register with the LA Times website, the Times insists on spamming me with commercial e-mails for products about which I do not care. If I opt-out of the e-mails, the Times cancels my website registration. (Which is why I don't have a Times website registration anymore…

And let's not forget the slew of pop-up, pop-under and screen take-over ads that accompany any visit to more newspaper websites than I am any longer able to count.

Doc Searls, my source on this post, highlights Niles' solution - getting content to the front.

...if news organizations are proud of their news content, why do so many insist on hiding it?

Readers owe you nothing. They have no responsibility as citizens to read your reporting, and no responsibility as consumers to look at your ads. The have the right, and ability, to go about their lives without ever once glancing at your publication.

If you want people to read your publication, you then need to do whatever is necessary to make them want to read it.

That means leading with your best shot.

By and large, legal publications whether they be from ALM, the ABA Journal, or others have not been too bad about throwing advertising in our faces when we click to their online sites. I hope as ALM's off line revenues start to slide that they can resist the temptation to launch sites with click through ads and registration.

The ABA Journal may not be as tempted as their online site is a start from scratch approach. It's not a regurgitation of the ABA Journal hard copy, where ALM's Law.com appears to be online publication of their print properties.

But I have had legal publications and legal bloggers call inquiring about building a website or blog with click through registration, pay to access, or click through pop up ads. No matter how shortsighted I tell them that is, they usually turn to another party who will do what they say, as opposed to offer wise counsel.

It's all about making your content relevant. That means making it easy to access without distraction.

Sure have ads, but don't be stupid about the way you present them. Look at what Google, Yahoo, and Newsvine have done. Ads and content can coexist.

How's it work?

• Law.com, in cooperation with Law Technology News magazine, will devote Law.com's Legal Blog Watch Web page and newsletter to LTNY coverage from Tuesday through Thursday, Feb. 5-7, offering a central clearinghouse for LTNY-related blog coverage.
• If you'll be blogging at LTNY, email law.com with the name of your blog and bloggers.
• Law.com post about all blogger-participants.
• After you post on your blog, send them the URL with an intro sentence about the post to legalblogwatch@alm.com . (Include your name, blog name, phone number, and email address in case they need to contact you)
• The Legal Blog Watch editor will post the blog posts in a style similar to that of the EDD Update Blog.
• ALM will highlight the LTNY Special Edition of Legal Blog Watch on Law.com, the Law Technology News website, Law.com Legal Technology and their associated blogs: EDD Update, Sean Doherty's Law.com Legal Technology and Monica Bay's The Common Scold.

In addition, per Per Monica Bay, Editor-in-Chief of Law Technology News,

[ALM is] offering free full confererence passes to all bloggers who are journalists, analysts or consultants, who plan to blog during LTNY. Not just journalists.

Vendor bloggers are also welcome to participate in our LegalBlogWatch three-day LTNY marathon, and join us at the Weds morning gathering, but we cannot offer vendor bloggers full conference passes.

Email requests for press pass credentials to LegalBlogWatch@alm.com by noon on Monday, Feb. 4, and pick up your credentials at LegalTech registration during the show.

Bloggers aren't being recognized as journalists across the board by ALM, something that can get folks like me up in arms. But looking at some law blogs, I can understand why.

Finally, all bloggers are welcome to join ALM, Law.com, and Law Technology News on Wednesday, from 9-10 a.m., for an informal bloggers gathering at the Pettite Trianon Room, on the 3rd floor of the Hilton. They promise to provide lousy coffee and mediocre Danish.

Maybe I ought to be attending. I had not planned to do so. After attending in '06, I had nightmares for 2 weeks about E-Disvovery vendors attacking me from both sides of narrow aisles. Nothing wrong with e-discovery software of course, I just have no use for it.

Though he'll be spending a lot of time in a booth conversing with attendees and other vendors, Brian equates blogging to be one in the same - 'just conversation via an online medium.'

Kudos to Brian for leading the way. I hope with a year's passage and more legal tech people grasping the power of blogging, we'll have quite a few other folks live blogging from LegalTech.

One way to find out. Set up a RSS feed frm Google Blog Search for LegalTech. You'll then pick up a feed from any posts referencing LegalTech. In addition, bloggers should tag relevant posts with the LegalTech tag so that both attendees and others can easily follow the happenings and conversation in New York.

Haven't heard anything from ALM, LegalTech's sponsor and host, promoting blogging from the event. If another year goes by without ALM taking the lead in empowering bloggers and promoting what they are doing (and I mean non ALM employees) from the LegalTech show, I think that's further evidence technology in the legal profession is always going to lag behind other industries.

Doing a search for Martindale-Hubbell this morning, the first four results displayed are from legal blogs not affiliated with ALM in anyway. It was not until the fourth result did I find an ALM published piece.

What's the significance?

• ALM, a traditional legal publisher (National Law Journal and 34 other national and regional legal periodicals), is recognizing the importance of legal content published by bloggers.
• ALM recognizing that legal blogs, other than those selected by ALM's Law.com Blog Network, are of equal or greater importance than those in this network which the unknowing have labeled the best legal blogs.
• Legal research of a legal index that did not include legal blogs would be incomplete.
• Lawyers may self-publish via a blog without submitting articles to legal publications. Their content will be seen along side content published by legal periodicals.
• ALM, and its owner Incisive Media, recognizing that user generated content may be as important as their own content in the well being of their publications.
• Law.com could become a legal information center with more content produced by practicing lawyers, law professors, and law students than ALM's own reporters and editors.

Still some important features missing, such as the ability to subscribe to search results by RSS, but this is a good start for blogs at ALM.

The details:

• Getting found on the Web: How lawyers can leverage user-generated content and other new Internet tools to attract clients.
• Wednesday, October 24.
• 12 - 2pm Eastern Time.
• Click here for registration, use promo code 2213032 when ordering to receive discount.

Carolyn who publishes her own blog, My Shingle and is co-publisher of Legal Blog Watch at ALM, regularly writes and speaks on law firm marketing and management for solos and small law firms. Her passion is an inspiration for all of us.

Mark is co-founder of Avvo, a new online lawyer directory that rates and profiles every attorney, so as to help people choose the right lawyer. Though Avvo's drawn resistance by some lawyers, I see a place for consumer driven lawyer ratings. I've also found Mark, a former practicing lawyer and Expedia exec, most sincere in his drive to bring a valuable resource to the public.