ALM, the parent company of Law.com and an international network of legal and business publications, is slated to launch a new Law.com website and mobile app next week. ALM has scheduled a launch event Monday night in New York City, to coincide with the start of LegalTech New York, which begins the next morning.

I am expecting that the event will include more details on the new Law.com contributor network. As I wrote here in October, Law.com has been preparing to launch an extensive contributor network in the style of The Huffington Post, with somewhere between 100-500 independent writers from outside ALM becoming regular contributors of commentary and analysis. The network is expected to use the same software that powers the Forbes network of independent contributors.

Also in October, it unveiled an app for iPads and iPhones that I described then as “seamless, stylish and customizable.” I do not know whether next week’s announcement will be a replacement or an update for that app.

Already this month, ALM rolled out 18 redesigned websites for its regional and national publications. The announcement described the redesigned sites as “sleeker, more graphically rich, and faster” and said that advertising would be “more natural and better integrated.

As part of the redesign, ALM also moved its affiliated blogs. Whereas they previously ran on the Typepad blog hosting platform, they are now incorporated directly into each publication’s website. For example, here is the former version of The BLT: The Blog of LegalTimes, and here is the new version. Posts from the blog are also featured on the main LegalTimes page.

At least some of the blogs will now require you to register in order to read the posts. For example, the Tex Parte Blog, the blog of Texas Lawyer, says:

Access to your favorite blogs will continue as part of ALM’s digital membership. When you visit, you just need to sign in to your existing account, or register for a new membership. It’s as simple as that!

I described ALM’s new digital memberships in a post last August. If you opt for the free registration — as opposed to a paid subscription — then you are limited to five free articles every 30 days. It appears to me that the limit now applies to blog posts as well as news stories, although I have not confirmed that. If you followed these blogs using their RSS feeds, you will need to update the feed link.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.