American Lawyer Media To Integrate Law.com Content

Posted on May 9, 2002

American Lawyer Media, Inc. (ALM), a legal journalism and information company, announced that it will acquire and operate Law.com's Web content and seminar businesses. The law.com brand will be retained under the ALM umbrella, and the website will feature expanded content and services from ALM's 24 national and regional publications, including The American Lawyer and The National Law Journal, as well as other ALM publishing, tradeshow and research divisions. The Law.com group will operate as a division within ALM and will continue to be based at its current location in San Francisco.

"The reuniting of these two leading legal media outlets will reinforce ALM's position as the gateway to the legal industry," said William Pollak, CEO of ALM. "Both subscribers and advertisers will benefit from our enhanced ability to streamline communication to the industry, simplify execution of marketing programs and expand the information content and services that law.com has provided visitors over the past two years."

Law.com was formed as an independent company in mid-1999, to leverage ALM's existing online assets. Since that time, Law.com has steadily expanded its online offerings to include Practice Centers for specialty law practice areas, state websites and information sites for in-house counsel, law students and legal technology professionals. Law.com's RealLegal legal application services business will be spun off as a new entity, RealLegal, LLC, based in Denver.

"As one company, under one management team, we will be able to manage delivery of information to an expanding customer base more efficiently and pursue additional revenue opportunities. As a result, while we expect that this transaction will have a short-term negative impact on earnings, we believe that it will add significant bottom-line value for all ALM stakeholders in the long-term," said Pollak. "The product and revenue enhancement opportunities we're evaluating for the immediate future include expanded cross-promotion of job opportunities and listings, as well as integrated Web access to content not currently available on the law.com site. This new content includes ALM's extensive online databases for verdicts and settlements across the country, ALM's expert witness and consultant network for litigators, and ALM newsletters and directories."