Above the Law Scraps Comments Section, Points to Media Shift

Some big news in the legal media world: Above the Law has scrapped its comments section, its managing editor David Lat announced in a post on Tuesday.

Citing a shift in how readers engage with stories and pointing to sites such as Wired, NiemanLab and Digiday, which have also eliminated comments sections, Lat wrote that online commenting is a thing of the past.

Per his ATL post, titled Farewell to Comments :

Today the comments are not what they once were. Although occasionally insightful or funny, ATL comments nowadays are generally fewer in number, not very substantive (often just inside jokes among the commentariat), yet still often offensive. They also represent a very small percentage of our total traffic (as we can tell because of the click required to access them).

It’s not clear how or why our comments changed in number and quality. Did the layoffs of the Great Recession cause lawyers and staff to worry about sharing sensitive inside information about their firms on the web? Did the revelation of NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden make everyone paranoid about their digital footprints? Did the rise of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, redirect quality conversation to other venues? We don’t know.

The announcement is significant to readers of the blog, which include in-house counsel, law firm partners, associates, technology professionals, law students, and academics. Since ATL launched almost ten years ago, much of its identity has been tied to its conversational tone and user interaction through commenting.

We caught up with Lat for an interview about the decision, which he said came after heated debate and serious thought among the blog’s five-editor staff.

Big Law Business: I feel like commenting is such a big part of ATL’s identity. Why the switch?

Lat: It’s funny, I didn’t know this was going to get as much attention as it has. The issue of comments is something that we, like many other websites, have been grappling with for years. We did have some internal disagreements about what is the best approach. I won’t reveal who was in what camp. We were grappling with the value of the comments against the headaches, in terms of offense and distraction and the effect on our brand. After spending months of debate, we decided that it was time to remove the reader comments.

[caption id="attachment_6251" align="alignleft” width="232"][Image “Courtesy of Above the Law” (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/david-lat-e1450216896135.jpg)]Courtesy of Above the Law[/caption]

Big Law Business: What do you mean by headaches?

Lat: Over the years we have gotten many complaints about the comments. I speak at many law schools and conferences and one of the questions I get most frequently asked is, ‘What is up with your comments section?’ Your content is funny and insightful, but your comments are offensive, racist, sexist and homophobic. Another example is that we would write about somebody and somebody anonymous would post something potentially defamatory about that person in the comments. Under federal law section 230 we are not liable for that, but we would remove that out of a sense of good will. We don’t want to be a forum where people could trash people in that way. Do we write critical things about law schools and law firms ourselves? Yes, but we are accountable. Our bylines are on the articles. You can email us to complain.

Big Law Business: Was having the resources to moderate the comments an issue?

Lat: Yes. Another option that was open to us was engaging in more active moderation. But we had two concerns about that. First, it is a drain on resources. We are a pretty small outfit. The five full-time editors write and edit our own stories, plus handle our columnists, plus social media. We didn’t have much bandwidth handling the comments to decide what should and shouldn’t go up. Then, where do you draw the line? There are tough calls when a comment is really offensive and it’s substantive. This goes to the first concern about bandwidth. We just don’t have the resources to spend doing that.

Big Law Business: What kind of reaction have you gotten so far?

Lat: So far, I have to mention I have not read the comments on this post yet, although they are open. I have been getting reactions over Facebook and Twitter and most of the reaction is positive. I also think the people who react negatively have not read our comments lately. A few years ago we had great comments. A lot of the people who are objecting to our comments only recall the glory days of the comments. Anyone who is familiar with our current comments will know why we are eliminating them. We did a lot of reading and there were some sites that tried to do comments with more active moderation, requiring identification, but we decided, following other sites that I mentioned in the post, that we would go with a bright line rule. Lawyers like bright line rules.

Big Law Business: What were the comments like in recent days?

Lat: They were certainly offensive. We were willing to tolerate a certain amount of offensiveness if there was some corresponding value. But we found what the comments had essentially turned into what was a lot of inside commenting among the commenters. Not having read the comments previously, a lot of them would be indecipherable to you. They weren’t on point. They weren’t related to the stories. They might be referencing some prior story. They just were not germane.

Big Law Business: How does this fit into the broader media landscape right now?

Lat: I think that one evolution that we have seen in the media climate is an increasing focus on civility. The internet is not as ‘wild wild west’ in some ways as it used to be. People want discussions to be a little more pleasant or a little more civil. I think that is the direction things have moved in. We are not an outlier in this. There have been a lot of sites from Reuters to Recode that have removed their comments section. I do acknowledge that there is a potential danger. What if things become so sanitized that you can’t speak truth to power? But I’m not worried about that. As we say in the post, the Internet is a very big place. There are lots of message boards and forums where people can post things. They can still text us with anonymous information about their law firm or law school. We will continue to report stories, but we don’t want to give the real estate to comments that are not on-point and also offensive.

Big Law Business: Media trends aside, does this move represent a change in the identity of Above the Law?

Lat: I would definitely say that I think that Above the Law is trying to become somewhat more mainstream. We still want to be humorous. We still want to be candid. Those are things that have drawn readers to us over the years. But at the same time, we (are turning) 10 and like a 10-year-old kid we have done some growing up. I think it’s important for us to be taking a different approach. I think it’s the evolution of the brand. In addition to humor, we have career advice and tech coverage and industry news. We want the comments to reflect the seriousness of the content we are now producing. Even though the comments were hidden, they were very much associated with our brand. Now when people complaint about comments, we can say, ‘What comments?’

(More about changes in the legal media in our podcast interview with Peter Lattman, who started The Wall Street Journal Law Blog and recently left The New York Times.)