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Blogger reminds AmLaw to tell whole story

By Mark Obbie

Overlawyered's Walter Olson wins the legal-journalism editor's award of the week. When Olson read Brian Baxter's report in yesterday's AmLaw Daily about the $688 million legal-fee award to plaintiffs' class counsel for their work in the $7.2 billion Enron class action settlements, he zeroed in on Baxter's use of one source: John Coffee. Baxter quote Coffee, a heavily used quote-meister among business and legal reporters, justifying the fee award. He set up the quote by saying praise had come from "some unlikely legal circles" and called Coffee "a professor at Columbia Law School and frequent class action critic." Once Olson reminded readers that Coffee wasn't all that unlikely -- he worked as a fee consultant for plaintiffs' counsel in the case -- Baxter updated the story by early evening to disclose that and to describe Coffee as among "some who have criticized the class action process in the past."

Full post as published by Lawbeat on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).