Alumni Spotlight – R.J. Vogt
R.J. Vogt (’15) Senior Reporter at Law360
I started working for Law360 in August 2017, diving in head first to the world of class action complaints, million dollar settlements, and shady corporate mergers. Over the next year, I wrote more than 500 daily news stories covering everything from Stormy Daniels’ suits against the President to Tesla investors’ suits against Elon Musk to sexual harassment allegations against the attorney general of New York and a renowned circuit court judge. I also won an in-house “Best Trial Coverage 2018” award for my work reporting on a $100 million dispute over who really invented the Beats headphone brand (hint: it wasn’t all music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rapper Dr. Dre’s idea, though they did give stirring testimony).
In August 2018, I was promoted to a senior reporter position on the company’s new Access to Justice beat, a public interest initiative offered in front of the subscription pay-wall and focused on systemic justice flaws that affect marginalized groups. In this position I’ve written stories about discrepancies in wrongful conviction compensation across states (and depending on representation); a SCOTUS decision on the excessive fines clause; military efforts to discharge non-citizen soldiers without due process; Trump’s bid to nix federal legal aid funding; obstacles that prevent people from clearing their criminal records and more. I’ve also come up with story ideas for other reporters, appeared on the company’s award-winning legal news podcast Pro Say, attended United Nations events and legal tech roundtables, and been featured on a prominent Chicago radio station as an expert on a high court case.
While covering the Access to Justice beat, I often draw on the lessons I learned as a College Scholar studying literary journalism. Under the guiding hand of Professor Amber Roessner, I wrote my senior thesis on the advocacy journalism of Ida B. Wells (published in Political Pioneer of the Press, Lexington Books, 2018). Wells focused on lynching, a main justice issue of her time, and used data and impassioned rhetoric to fight against the extrajudicial killing of African Americans. Though my current employer eschews subjectivity in favor of the traditional objectivity standard, I still draw on Wells’ use of data and focus on rule of law in my own work. Funnily enough, the conference room where I interviewed for the job is named after Wells; it seems fitting.