I was saddened last night to find out that Monica Bay, a journalistic legend in legal technology, passed away last Friday at the age of 74.

Monica Bay worked for 30 years at ALM from 1985 to 2015. The first 13 years she worked as a senior editor in San Francisco at ALM’s The Recorder, the last 17 years as Editor-in-Chief of Law Technology News (which is now known as Legaltech^® News, many of us still refer to it as “LTN”). Her tenure spanned the emergence of legal technology as an industry and the move from print magazines (remember those?) to digital media. She was a true giant in our industry and many of us looked up to her as a role model for legal journalism.

A couple of my memories of Monica include the bloggers breakfast that she hosted every year at LegalTech (which is now known as Legalweek). I attended several years in a row early in my blogging career, and it was a great opportunity to get to know other bloggers in the industry, many of whom I had been reading their content for years.

Another memory I have of Monica is that she had very high journalistic standards. I remember she had a particular distaste for the word “solution” when referring to technology sol, er, platforms. I recall her jumping on that word in particular when I submitted a write-up to her about our platform when I was at Cloudnine.

Bob Ambrogi (who knew Monica much better than I did) has published a terrific write-up, which is available here. You can also check out his LinkedIn post here, which has comments and memories from many people who knew her.

Every industry has certain individuals that were key to its emergence and Monica was that for the legal technology industry as a true leader and role model. Rest in Peace, Monica Bay.

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