The Editor’s Eye: What Makes a Story Newsworthy in Legal Journalism

[00:00:00] Ross Todd: A result isn’t necessarily a story. I need to know what’s different here, why it matters, compared with what else is going on that makes this different.

[00:00:18] Announcer: Welcome to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let’s get started with the show.

[00:00:35] Michelle Calcote King: Hi, everyone. I’m Michelle Calcote King. I’m your host, and I’m the principal and president of Reputation Ink. Every week, dozens of litigation wins can land on one editor’s desk, but only a handful get called newsworthy. What separates a story worth telling from a routine case update? And as AI reshapes journalism, what can it never replace?

Ross Todd, editor and columnist for the Am Law Litigation Daily, has spent the last six years answering those questions. We’re going to talk with him about how he decides what’s worth covering, where AI is changing legal journalism, and where he thinks AI still can’t compete with a human reporter. Welcome to the show, Ross.

[00:01:19] Ross Todd: Thanks, Michelle. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:21] Michelle Calcote King: I’m excited to chat with you. I did a brief introduction, but if you don’t mind, tell our listeners a little bit about you.

[00:01:29] Ross Todd: I’ve been the editor and columnist for Litigation Daily for the past six years, but I’ve been at the company formerly known as ALM, now known as Sintelic, for 20. I spent about the first nine years covering the business of law for The American Lawyer magazine, and then moved over to our California affiliate and caught the court bug covering the Northern District of California. Now I’ve sort of married those two, where I cover the intersection of the business of law and litigation at Litigation Daily, which is a newsletter that goes out to about 10,000 folks and is an affiliate of The American Lawyer and Am Law.

[00:02:12] Michelle Calcote King: Great. Let’s jump into the big question: What separates a story or a pitch that’s genuinely newsworthy from something that isn’t?

[00:02:28] Ross Todd: A result isn’t necessarily a story. I need to know what’s different here, why it matters, compared with what else is going on that makes this different.

It’s better to give me a fact than an adjective. I’m also very interested in the players as well as the game. The lawyers matter to me. I’m covering these things from the litigator’s perspective, so strategy, technique, new tools that they’re using — all of those things are every bit as interesting to me as the result.

And I know we’re going to get into talking about Litigator of the Week, but it’s Litigation Daily. I’ve got four columns a week that aren’t Litigator of the Week, and a lot of blank space to fill. So insight about trends in litigation, any data people are tracking about what’s going on in the courts, or the volume of litigation, or backlogs — all interesting to me.

So those are the main broad takeaways in terms of what I see as a story versus just a regular case update.

[00:03:56] Michelle Calcote King: When you say you want to know about the attorney, that the attorney matters, tell me a little bit more about that.

[00:04:07] Ross Todd: This is a competitive game of storytelling when you get right down to it. It’s why I chose to cover litigators rather than dealmakers, because for these folks, information is something to weave into a narrative to persuade. And that is an art form. There’s certainly a lot of data being looked at in terms of what can inform persuasion these days, but the art of getting a judge or jury on your side, and managing a client relationship — those are things that are very human and relational.

And they’re things a reporter can get at that maybe a large language model or generative AI cannot.

[00:05:05] Michelle Calcote King: Right.

[00:05:05] Ross Todd: It’s maybe a bit of self-preservation in that interest as well.

[00:05:11] Michelle Calcote King: Well, you mentioned Litigator of the Week. Let’s go ahead and talk about it. For those who aren’t familiar with it, tell us what it is, when it started, and what you cover.

[00:05:26] Ross Todd: It’s been around essentially since the early days of Litigation Daily, which started back in 2008. The format has changed a little bit. My predecessor in the editor and columnist chair, Jenna Greene, very wisely, a couple of years before I moved over to Litigation Daily, made it into a Q&A.

So now the table stakes to compete for that top spot for Litigator of the Week are that you’ve got to be willing and able to answer written questions about the representation. In the early years, the write-up of Litigator of the Week looked a lot like an awards profile that you’d see in any number of publications, talking about a particular matter.

Now I think it’s a lot more substantive. It gets into how the matter came to the set of lawyers handling it, the strategic decisions they made, and gives people who aren’t Litigator of the Week useful tips, tools and information about the particular act of persuasion that happened in that instance.

People have to get client sign-off to participate in that Q&A before raising their hand to be chosen for Litigator of the Week. And it’s very much of the week — the cutoff every week is Wednesday at 5 p.m., going back to the prior Wednesday at 5 p.m. So sometimes there are cases that any other week would’ve gotten it, but for the competition they were up against that particular week. It’s always an interesting exercise to sit down at the deadline and go through the pile we have and figure out who we’re going to be asking questions that week.

[00:07:35] Michelle Calcote King: As you go through that pile, are there certain things you’re looking for? You mentioned legal strategy — is it also size of impact, a big settlement? Tell me what you’re looking for.

[00:07:53] Ross Todd: Yes. The answer is yes — we’re looking for all those things. Looking for novelty, looking for precedential value, looking for dollars, looking for whether this is an interesting story to tell. Was there some interesting lawyering that went on? Looking at where we are in the process — if there’s some finality, a jury verdict, an appellate decision overturning something — that’s going to be more in the game than an early motion to dismiss, survival or knockout, just by the nature of the game.

It’s a little hard to describe because it’s always an apples-to-oranges comparison when you get down to it — looking at a giant antitrust case decided on summary judgment versus a first bellwether in a mass tort that went to trial and resulted in a verdict one way or the other.

It’s an interesting exercise, and it’s one that is as much an act of news judgment as it is any sort of weighing of legal merits. Though, if you’ve done a piece of work that results in a change in the law, that’s also something we have to take into account.

[00:09:37] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, absolutely. I have a couple questions. I don’t do a lot of the work anymore, but when I used to do PR for lawyers, they would often say to me, “This is a huge deal,” or, “This settlement, I think it’s probably the biggest.” And part of my job was saying, “Is this really…”

Do you run into that problem? How do you figure out whether something was truly impactful, truly market-moving, or whatever it is?

[00:10:13] Ross Todd: Yeah, that’s one of the great things about having a newsroom full of very smart people who have been covering this for a long time to go to when you’re presented with a pitch like that — you have a baseline check on a lot of those things.

If a decision is a matter of first impression, the judge points that out. They have egos of their own — whenever they’re doing that deep dive for the first time, they like to let people know. So oftentimes that piece is pretty easy to figure out.

But our own archives are a place I go. Other people’s archives, too — just regular, basic reportage and research hygiene is a big piece of it. I empathize with you getting that pitch — you have to do that in the first instance, knowing that I’m going to do it in the second instance. So if you come to me with “and here is the proof,” it makes that pitch much more powerful.

[00:11:26] Michelle Calcote King: How do you determine who gets credit when multiple firms are involved?

[00:11:35] Ross Todd: Yeah, that’s a pure reporting exercise, and it can be delicate. You have to suss out who wrote the briefs, who handled the argument, who made the actual argument that won when everybody was dividing the arguments. There are some instances where the person who came up with the nugget of the argument that won — because of where their client sat within the hierarchy, or because of the individual arguments they had to make — stood up and said something else at the actual hearing.

Figuring that out involves talking to a lot of people. Lots of times people play nice in the sandbox, come forward and share credit, and that makes the job easy. But when people are competing to say, “We did the piece of advocacy that actually got to this result,” you have to dig into the briefs, talk to the other people who are also claiming credit, and suss it out.

So it’s a delicate balance, to say the least.

[00:13:02] Michelle Calcote King: I’m sure it is. Since you’ve been with Litigation Daily for a while, has the type of story you’re looking for changed over the years?

[00:13:14] Ross Todd: That’s a really good question. I’ve had multiple series come along that lived their life and went away. One that was a real favorite of mine was talking to litigators about who they thought was the best at some particular piece of the litigation process. That led to stories different than anything I’d ever written — about people like the person who sits in the chair as the trial tech, making sure the exhibits go up at the right time, that the right thing is highlighted at the right time, that everything is working as smoothly as possible with the lawyers presenting and what’s up on the screen.

That series was born out of hearing a podcast that John Quinn did with one of his partners who was particularly good at cross-examination. It’s not that I’ve stopped doing those — it’s just that series came and went.

One thing I did do for a while that’s a really hard story for us to crack, given where these folks sit, is talking to in-house litigators. There are so few of those positions, they’re so sought after, they’re so interesting. They’re doing the hiring and firing of the folks who are our readers, so they have a really interesting perspective. But they also sit in a very different spot within the company than partners sit within a law firm — large public companies aren’t exactly looking to draw attention to their disputes. Those are folks I’d love to talk to more, but because of the amount of effort that went into one or two columns with them, I’ve held off of late. And that’s a bit of a shame, because there’s so much to gain from talking to those folks.

[00:15:49] Michelle Calcote King: Are there any trends you’re very interested in hearing more about now? I don’t know if it works quite that way for you with litigation, but is there anything on your mind that seems to be coming up more and that you’re looking to talk about more?

[00:16:10] Ross Todd: Just the volume of high-stakes matters that are actually making it all the way to trial seems to be ticking upward, even though there’s been a long-term trend of especially civil jury trials trending downward — the percentage of cases going to trial. That’s interesting to me.

All the things lawyers are doing to use AI to prep for oral arguments or trial, or for emotions practice, is all fascinating to me. I think there are certain trends within the types of cases getting filed, and the volume of cases getting filed, that I’m always interested in. But being a litigation columnist means you follow the disputes, and the disputes in some ways follow the economy and the arc of the national news cycle. So it gives you a front-row seat to conflict and some of the most interesting stories going on in the country writ large.

[00:17:39] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, absolutely. What do PR people or lawyers who reach out themselves do well when they’re working with you? You mentioned earlier things like telling the story behind the case, the lawyering, the strategy, making sure the client’s approved for them to participate in the Q&A. Is there anything else — any tips on working more effectively with you?

[00:18:13] Ross Todd: Just those tips I gave you at the top: tell me what’s different, why it matters, and compared with what. Who, what, when and where questions are ones I need to get right, and you coming to me with all that information correct is very important.

I can’t tell you how many lists of lawyers I’ve gotten for Litigator of the Week include one, two or three misspellings, but that’s just basics — that’s just blocking and tackling. What I’m really interested in is how and why questions. Coming in with a sense of what the how and the why of this particular story would be is something I know is hard on the PR end, because getting the who, what, when and where — and getting the lawyers to tell you that — is difficult in and of itself.

But that’s where the story is. That’s where the narrative is. That’s what I can chew on, and what I can give somebody else as a useful piece of information to help them with their own professional life. That’s where all that sits.

[00:19:36] Michelle Calcote King: Well, you mentioned how lawyers are using AI. I’m curious how your newsroom is using AI.

[00:19:47] Ross Todd: I think that varies from reporter to reporter, in terms of their own personal comfort with the technology. We’re not using it to write stories — I know that much. But it does really help you look at a large volume of information, especially on deadline.

It can also help you check your own description of a result versus the actual decision that came down — “Hey, am I saying this right?” That’s a really useful way I use it in our own runners-up and shoutouts, given that I’m briefing nine cases every week for those who weren’t quite Litigator of the Week but still are worth noting.

That’s a very useful use case for it. On a tight deadline, looking at Litigator of the Week, I can feed full trial transcripts into Copilot, which is the platform we have the most access to here at Sintelic, and say, “Where should I spend my next 10 or 15 minutes looking in here to see what’s being claimed, and whether it stands up to the reality of the black and white of the transcript?” It really helps me in terms of time management and getting to the moments in a litigation matter where the rubber meets the road.

[00:21:29] Michelle Calcote King: Well, that’s great. My final question — we talked about what people do right with you, but do you have any things that drive you a little crazy, that you wish they wouldn’t do, in terms of working with you, pitching you, how they give you information?

[00:21:52] Ross Todd: Just folks who hide the fact that somebody else might have been involved in a matter, because they’re just trying to get credit for their own folks. We’ve got to do the reporting to make sure what you’re saying is accurate anyway, and if somebody else split arguments with your folks, it’s just going to lead to skepticism on our part.

I know in some instances, folks in PR are just coming with what they’ve been handed and trying to get out there as quickly as possible — there’s utility in that, and I get that. But if it’s not the whole story, it can be frustrating when we’ve written it up one way, and then somebody else comes knocking on the door saying, “You should have given credit to this lawyer for…” That piece of it can be frustrating, especially when you’re dealing with it after the fact and feel like you should have had all the information on the front end.

[00:23:04] Michelle Calcote King: Right.

[00:23:05] Ross Todd: Another thing is just coming extremely late with something. I know it sometimes takes a long time to get client sign-off. But coming to us with a straight-up result a week after it happened, looking for coverage without a lawyering story or something else to it — that’s just not understanding how the news cycle works.

[00:23:36] Michelle Calcote King: Yeah, those are really good tips. And yes, we’ve been in that situation before, where the result came down several weeks ago, and we have to let them know that story has passed.

[00:23:51] Ross Todd: Yeah, no, but the thing is, where I sit, I’ve got a daily column going out at 7:30 every morning, so I’m a little bit divorced from the news cycle. So you can still pitch me that win from way back when, but you’ve got to give me some meat to it. What lawyering went into it? What was it that somebody else can take away from that win that happened two weeks ago? I’m not completely averse to revisiting something a little older if there’s something actually to say about it. But just that this happened two weeks ago — there’s nothing there.

[00:24:35] Michelle Calcote King: Right. Build it into a bigger story. That’s great. Is there anything else, any other thoughts you’d like to leave our listeners with?

[00:24:47] Ross Todd: We’ve got a newsroom full of folks who are looking for the how and why stories. And I’ve got six in particular — when I said I have four columns a week, I actually lied, because I’ve only got three, since in the last couple of years I’ve gotten a team of contributing editors who write for me for Wednesday’s column that runs on Thursday.

There’s Ellen Bardash, who covers Delaware and corporate governance for us. Emily Saul, who covers the New York judiciary. Sedra Mayfield, who’s the co-host of our own Legal Speak podcast and covers Georgia litigation. Laura Lorek in Texas. Alyssa Aquino, also in New York, who covers securities and financial services litigation. And Avalon Zappo, who covers the federal appellate courts. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of our litigation newsroom. But working with them and getting them working on how and why stories, and seeing their energy for writing for Litigation Daily, has been inspiring.

I try not to hold myself to their bar, since they have five weeks to work on their one story and I’ve got today to work on tomorrow’s story. But it’s been inspiring to see the kind of things they’ve been writing for our audience.

[00:26:22] Michelle Calcote King: Love to hear that. Well, thank you so much. We’ve been talking to Ross Todd, editor and columnist for the Am Law Litigation Daily. Thanks for your time today.

[00:26:32] Ross Todd: Thanks, Michelle.

[00:26:36] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Spill the Ink, a podcast by Reputation Ink. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.