Cortney Fielding, the Superior Court reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, is leaving the legal paper to freelance and work on a documentary project. * Update: Catherine Ho, a Metpro intern at the Los Angeles Times and UC Berkeley grad, has been hired to take over the beat.

From Fielding's exit email to the staff:

Seriously, leaving was a tough decision. I’ve loved working with everyone here and really enjoy covering LA courts, but curiosity has gotten the better of me. I want to see what, if anything, I can accomplish out on my own and maybe catch my breath a little while figuring out what I want to do next in this business. Granted, this is something I probably couldn’t do if I hadn’t had the foresight to marry a man who would one day collect a stable paycheck from a boring old insurance company, so props go to me for that.

I got into journalism because I enjoyed storytelling and lacked the imagination necessary to make stories up myself. Why bother when there is already so much great material ripe for the picking? I plan on continuing to tell other people’s stories. I’ve gotten a few cool freelance gigs to get me started, and I’m working on some bigger projects I’ll tell everyone about after they are more certain-so I don’t look like a total loser if they fall through.

But, if by the end of the year, I’m calling you as a PR person trying to pitch a story about an amazing law firm’s ground-breaking swine-flu practice, I guess we will know this was a very,very bad idea.

Your co-worker and friend