Law360 journalists vote to join union

The journalists at legal news website Law360 have overwhelmingly voted to join the News Guild of New York.

The unofficial vote count is 109 in favor of joining the union and nine against.

The count has not yet been certified by the National Labor Relations Board. The company and its lawyers are raising concerns about how some votes were mailed in.

Journalists at the website had petitioned in July to be represented by the union. Law360 is owned by LexisNexis Group, a subsidiary of RELX Group.

The petition followed an incident where management enforced a non-compete agreement against a recently departed employee. As part of a recent settlement with New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, which stemmed from an investigation initiated by The News Guild, the company has discontinued its practice of requiring employees to sign non-compete agreements, which had restricted their ability to find other jobs.

The company aggressively tried to convince journalists not to join the union through meetings with the staff.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.