Welcome to Session/Law. Kevin Featherly is a Twin Cities journalist who dwells in the space where the worlds of lawyers, lobbyists and legislators come together.
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Hey! What’s he up to
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.
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 be launching paid subscriptions at some point in the near future. 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?
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)