Thomson Reuters adds to its legal reporting team

Amy Stevens, the executive editor of Thomson Reuters Professional News, sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

Colleagues,

Please join me in welcoming several new hires to the Professional News/ Legal Team.

Robert Iafolla, Reporter, Labor and Employment law. Bobby has just joined us from Bloomberg BNA, where he spent the last three years covering the federal regulatory regime governing worker safety and health. Along with Dan Wiessner in Albany, Bobby will be reporting on unions, employers and the government bodies that regulate their contentious relationship. Before BBNA, Bobby worked at the Daily Journal, a California-based legal newspaper, where he held beats ranging from federal court to Congress to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bobby began his journalism career at Boston’s Weekly Dig, an alternative newspaper. He has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A in Journalism from U.S.C.  Bobby, who shares coverage of his beat with Dan Wiessner in Albany, is based in Washington D.C.  He reports to Alexia Garamfalvi.

Anthony Lin, EIC, Legal/Practitioner Insights. Tony will oversee several practice-area “verticals” for Westlaw and other news products geared toward legal professionals. He was most recently at the American Lawyer, where he spent more than five years as the magazine’s Asia editor and helped conceive and launch a news site providing coverage of legal affairs and the legal profession. Before that he spent seven years with the New York Law Journal as a senior reporter covering the legal industry, as well as major trials and court decisions.  Tony has a B.A. in East Asian studies from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He was an associate at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler before leaving the practice of law for a Swiss Internet telecom startup in the days of the first dotcom boom. Tony, who starts on Sept. 14, will report to Arlyn Gajilan and will be based in New York.

Stephanie Russell-Kraft, Reporter, Business of Law. Stephanie joins Reuters from Law360, where she was a senior reporter covering securities enforcement and litigation and before that worked as a general assignment reporter for the legal newswire. In her new beat as law-firm reporter, Stephanie will cover the players in an increasingly globalized and competitive industry. A polyglot who is a native German speaker and fluent in French, Stephanie has worked as a translator for a number of websites, including the Huffington Post. Stephanie has a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.A. in Anthropology from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.  She starts on Sept. 9, will report to Anthony Lin and will be based in New York.

Tracy Rucinski, Bankruptcy. Tracy, a Reuters veteran, joins us from the Madrid bureau. For the past 15 years, she has been breaking news on everything from Spanish energy policy to accounting scandals, a crushing recession and zombie borrowers. In recent months, while she was on a stint in United States, Tracy impressed us with her coverage of the bankruptcy of casino giant Caesars. In her new role, she will continue reporting on troubled companies and municipalities on the brink. Tracy is a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, and has a Master’s Degree in Language Interpretation and Translation from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She joined our team this week, is based in Chicago and reports to Tom Hals.