An investment group led by Chicago media entrepreneur Brian Timpone has purchased a St. Louis-based legal news publisher, Judiciocracy LLC.
With publications founded first in 2015 by attorney Edward “Coach” Weinhaus, Judiciocracy currently operates a network of news websites primarily dedicated to covering state courts.
They include titles focused on judicial misconduct and reform, lawyer misconduct, divorce law, and cryptocurrency law.
The purchase was announced by Weinhaus on Mon. April 1.
“Our company vision has always been to architect the publishing of legal news that nobody else will because their business models ignore the societal value of journalism,” Weinhaus said. “This transaction affords us access to not just financial resources, but technical know-how and software tools required to achieve that vision, tools that we couldn’t build ourselves before missing this unique time in our competitors’ collapse.”
The longest running Judiciocracy publication is BlockTribune. Weinhaus founded BlockTribune.com as a cryptocurrency news site in early 2015.
After graduating from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis in 2018 and teaching the first cryptocurrency course at Booth in 2019, he transitioned BlockTribune to become the first legal news journal solely dedicated to covering lawsuits over cryptocurrency and bitcoin.
In 2022, Weinhaus started two new publications, AbusiveDiscretion.com, which reports on accusations of judicial misconduct and ALABnews.com, primarily focusing on attorney misconduct. Relying on public records reporting, the bulk of the news stories are sourced from state disciplinary and ethics boards.
“Judiciocracy was formed to cover not just the cases but the system, and those who run it. This transaction enables us to explore the blue ocean of what is really going on in our courts,” Weinhaus said.
The company also recently launched VowBreakers.com, which reports on divorce filings, primarily in Illinois and Missouri.
Weinhaus said he started the site “to reduce family law conflict through exposure of how the system works.” He said he plans to expand to other states in the second half of 2024.The new investment group under Timpone agreed to maintain Judiciocracy’s commitment to the principles of the Association of Principled Press, a non-profit media watchdog organization Weinhaus founded in 2023 and runs.
Weinhaus will remain as the CEO and Publisher of Judiciocracy’s publications.
Weinhaus, 52, is managing partner of LegalSolved, a law firm.He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, undergraduate degree from the London School of Economics, and two law degrees from Washington University in St. Louis.
He founded Children of The Court (ChildrenOfTheCourt.org), an organization that seeks to represent the interests of children in divorce litigation, and is a founding director of the Legal Accountability Project, which helps potential law clerks assess federal judges.
In 2023, Weinhaus served as the Special Media Advisor to the Chair of the Israeli Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee during the country’s judicial reform debates.
Timpone, 51, is a founder of Metric Media LLC, which publishes more than 1,400 news web sites across the U.S.