By Brooks Igo
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(February 25) – The Texas Lawbook loves all its readers, but Kevin Wiggins is special. On Monday, he officially became the 5,000th paid subscriber to our publication.
In fact, the number of readers of The Texas Lawbook surged well past 5,300 this week thanks to several new group subscriptions from a handful of business law firms and corporate in-house legal departments.
The online business law publication published its first article in November 2011 with no subscribers. The first paying reader didn’t officially come until January, but he was noteworthy.
Texas Lawbook Senior Writer Mark Curriden was on the phone on the third Saturday of the month with a Wells Fargo IT technician and Texas Lawbook Creative Director Mike Skinner to officially become the first paid subscriber. Before he could finish typing in his credit card information, the Wells Fargo technician interrupted.
“We have your first subscriber,” he said. “Some guy named Watts; first name Wayne.”
And so AT&T Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel Wayne Watts beat The Texas Lawbook’s founder and owner to being the first paid subscriber.
“You had written a couple of stories that I wanted to read,” Watts later told Curriden. “The content is information I want to know.”
Twenty-eight months later, nearly 100 law firms and corporate legal departments have a group subscription to the Texas-based legal publication. More than 1,100 of the Lawbook’s 5,000-plus subscribers are corporate in-house counsel.
In addition, The Texas Lawbook reaches the readerships of both The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle, which often publish the business publication’s stories in their print and online versions. Together, the DMN and Chronicle reach more than 1 million readers daily in print and online, including prominent leaders in business and government.
The Texas Lawbook is an online newspaper that focuses on the practice of business law (litigation, transactional and regulatory) in Texas. The publication delivers breaking news, legal industry exclusives, in-depth analysis, industry trends, key player profiles, Q&A interviews and other proprietary content about the Texas business law community.