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Session/Law

What is it?

Session/Law is an independent newsletter for Minnesota lawyers, lobbyists and legislators—and all those news junkies out there who care about the same stuff as our core audience. 

Minnesota House floor (Photo: Kevin Featherly)

Who’s on the team?

Session/Law is written by journalists Kevin Featherly and Barbara Jones

Kevin Featherly, Session/Law’s primary writer, has decades of experience covering Minnesota law and politics. He spent the last five years with the Minnesota Capitol press corps, focusing on the legislative committees on judiciary, public safety, civil law and data practices, as well as the executive branch. He also covered key court decisions and other developments in the judiciary.

Barbara Jones, former editor of Minnesota Lawyer, is a regular contributor, focusing on important judicial arguments and rulings. She is not just a brilliant veteran journalist, she is an attorney who brings her unique training and expertise to bear from a practitioner’s perspective.

Why should I care?

If you care about police reform, you’ll want to follow Session/Law. If you care about all manner of criminal and civil law policy, courts and corrections and many other matters of legal interest, you’ll want to subscribe to Session/Law. 

If in-depth coverage of rulings and arguments at the Court of Appeals, Supreme Court and other Minnesota courts matter to you, Session/Law will be of interest. If you like to follow what the governor, state Attorney General, Department of Human Rights, and other powerful executive, judicial and legislative officials are doing, you’ll appreciate Session/Law. We’ll help you understand what they are up to and how it affects you.

Our regular Monday morning Session/Law Agenda feature offers you a leg up on planning for the week ahead. And Friday’s Session/Law’s Sound-off is edifying and fun, giving you a glimpse of what our sources have to say about current events.

Why should I pay?

Because we think what we write about matters to you. No other publication will provide the same kind of focused coverage on the legal/legislative matters that most impact you and the people you serve. It’s only through your support that this work is possible.

For a time, Session/Law will be priced at the introductory rate of $100 a year. That price will rise in future months as we expand and improve to better meet your needs.

Right now, all of Session/Law’s current articles and archives dating back to May 24 are free. But at some point soon we will raise a paywall, so that much of our content will be accessible only to paid subscribers. Get on board now so you don’t miss anything.

Click here to sign up today. Or just click on the button below.

A little deeper

Hey! What’s he up to?

This is Kevin Featherly, owner of Session/Law. Thought I’d add a little personal note to explain my vision for this effort.

Every year, the legislature passes loads of new laws and updates a bunch of old ones. Historically, they’ve always been gathered up into a big book called the “session laws” that get passed down to history. Legislators make them, lawyers have to deal with them and courts have to decide how to referee them.

Kevin Featherly (digital self portrait)

I like that concept: “Session laws.” So I’m stealing it.

Here “Session/Law” expresses a bit of a pun. My aim is to do something like what I did in my old job at the newspaper Minnesota Lawyer, which I recently left to pursue something else … namely, something like this.

For five years I have worked at the intersection of law and politics—covering Capitol committee hearings of interest to lawyers and other types of law geeks, while also keeping an eye on what is happening in the judiciary and legal communities as they struggle to implement those laws. There is a fair bit of overlap and interplay there, and it’s not much explored elsewhere.

I want that to keep that beat. But I want to do it independently.

Mission statement

Session/Law will be free … for a while. I’ll put that up front. I do need to keep making a living if this is to be my focus, so I will soon start emphasizing paid subscriptions. But I hope first to establish something that makes this operation worthwhile to enough people that it grows into something sustainable.

I’m a straight news reporter and my work, I’d anticipate, largely will reflect that. But I have some opinions of my own. You might detect them from time to time. In the mainstream news business, that is customarily camouflaged as “analysis.” You might just get some analysis from me. But I’ll endeavor to keep it well informed, smart and logically grounded.

After all, what I know that I know is what Socrates is supposed to have said he knew—though I’m as skeptical of him as I am of any other politician. That is: I know nothing. Or, at least, I don’t know enough to be convinced that taking anyone’s side consistently is such a great idea.

After all, I could be wrong. So could the other guy.

So with all that out of the way, here’s hoping that you enjoy going on this journey with me.

And welcome to Featherly’s Session/Law.

Who is that guy?

Kevin Featherly

I’m Kevin Featherly. I’m a Twin Cities journalist who has been around longer than I’m about to admit.

I’ve worked for various news services, ranging from the (El Cajon) Daily Californian to Washington Post Newsweek Interactive’s long-lamented online wire service, Newsbytes. Along the way I’ve worked for magazines and other newspapers, freelanced for 12 years beginning in 2005 and produced content for innumerable publications, web sites and corporate ventures.

Most recently, I was a member for five years of the Capitol press corps, covering the state government and the judiciary for Minnesota Lawyer. I learned a lot on that job and forged a ton of sources and contacts. I kinda want to keep doing it.

Otherwise, I’m a husband (hi, Tammy!), a dad, a frequent but undisciplined reader of novels, epic poems and histories, an advanced intermediate-level guitarist and a guy with a couple of books cooking in his head who keeps swearing he’ll write them one day.

But mostly, I’m a reporter with a broad independent streak. Here’s hoping you’ll follow along here on Session/Law and see where that takes us.

— Kevin Featherly, May 25, 2021 (updated May 28)

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Session/Law is currently free—so in the link above, click the Subscribe button and hit “free” option. For now, you’ll get everything we do.

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Covering the cross currents between the MN Capitol and the courts.

People

Twin Cities journalist whose beat dwells in the places where the legislative and legal communities intersect.
Lawyer in Minnesota since 1882, former editor of Minnesota Lawyer.