Playing Boswell to the Bar

Three new papers promise scoops and shoptalk for lawyers

Partners at one New York City law firm earn an average of more than $350,000 a year. Prominent attorneys in Atlanta are under federal investigation. Lawyer-agents drum up business at the Senior Bowl. Defections from a Chicago firm, a partner purge in New York. And how much will Bakke's lawyer be paid anyway?

When lawyers go to heaven, and a few presumably do, these are no doubt the kinds of matters they discuss over lunch. Now heaven can wait. The American Lawyer, which served up the aforesaid juicy items this week, and two other new tabloid-format papers, are busy attending to the profession's voracious appetite for scandal, scuttlebutt and shoptalk. Unlike hundreds of established legal journals, newspapers and newsletters, which concern themselves chiefly with issues and trends in the law, the new papers emphasize lawyers per se, ad hominem and in flagrante delicto. Also how and where lawyers work, what they earn, what their jobs are like, who's hot. who's not. and who's about to be indicted.

The times are overripe for a national publication about lawyers, and maybe even three. As the country grows ever more litigious, high-stakes law has ceased to be the preserve of large New York and Washington firms; practitioners now need to know on a regular basis what their colleagues in the rest of the country are up to. The potential market is vast: almost 500.000 lawyers (median annual income: $30.000) and 30.000 fresh law school graduates every year. To turn these prospects into profits, the three papers have evolved different editorial strategies:

The American Lawyer (monthly through August, then biweekly beginning in September) is the most irreverent and gossipy. Its inaugural issue, which subscribers receive this week, reads something like an Esquire magazine for lawyers -not surprising, since its editor is Steven Brill, 28. Esquire's law columnist, and American Lawyer's seed money came from Vere Harmsworth's Associated Newspapers, the British backer of Esquire. "Our basic philosophy is nothing about the law. everything about lawyers and lawyering," says Brill. He promises investigative reporting on pettifoggery, news of the constantly shifting tides of power and prestige among law firms, and a regular column critiquing the performance of attorneys before the U.S. Supreme Court. American Lawyer Publisher Jay Kriegel, once an aide to former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, claims 9,000 subscribers now at $19.50 a year and hopes eventually to have as many as 40,000.

The National Law Journal, a weekly published since September, views itself as "the Wall Street Journal of law" according to Publisher James A. Finkelstein, 30. Son of New York Law Journal Publisher Jerry Finkelstein. James has so far more than 25.000 subscribers (at $48 a year) and is shooting for 100.000. N.L.J. 's Page One is given over to readable, anecdotal stories of broad interest (a profile of Paper Chase Author John J. Osborn Jr.. an examination of nepotism in small law firms, a report on the lawyer boom in Atlantic City). Inside are more dryly technical columns on such subjects as taxation and computer use. "We are a balanced paper." says Finkelstein. "We cover both law and lawyers."

Legal Times of Washington, launched by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the publishing conglomerate, is the oldest (eight months) and most specialized. The weekly drops names aplenty in a gossipy column called Inadmissible, but its first concern is keeping tabs on the capital's regulatory maze and the revolving door that spins lawyers between the public and private sectors. "We like to think we are helping lawyers in their work," says Managing Editor David Beckwith, 36, a lawyer and former TIME law writer. "The other publications are into national trends and lighter stuff." Legal Times 'circulation is small (currently 3,500) but the price tag is hefty ($125 a year).

All three publications want lawyers who can write and reporters who can tell an assault from a battery. "Most people who can do both prefer to work as lawyers because of the money and the status," admits Beckwith. "For some reason, a lawyer working as a journalist is comparable to a doctor driving a garbage truck."

In the best tradition of damnum absque injuria, American Lawyer's first issue twits the National Law Journal for omitting Harcourt Brace's legal seminars from its calendar of events, and Legal Times' Feb. 5 issue faults Takeover Specialist Joseph Flom, who is chairman of the Journal's board of editors, for collecting retainers "for doing nothing." Says former Federal Trade Commission Executive Director Basil Mezines, a Washington lawyer who reads them: "I just love these gossip sheets -as long as they don't write about me." qed

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