What’s New in Legal Publishing
by Ann Hemming
Factors Leading to Change in Legal Information Publishing
The Freedom of Information Act is now in force. It is still too early to say how this will affect
our legal system and legal publishing, but in terms of primary sources of law there are changes on the
way in both the interpretation of legislation and the established case law precedent system. FOI has the
potential to extend Pepper v Hart challenges as more of the background documents from the government become
available. In addition FOI policies have already led to a big increase in the government’s electronic
publishing. This will make transcripts of judgments much more widely available and, as we move away from
the traditional selective publishing of case law into complete availability, this will affect not only l
egal publishing but also potentially the legal system itself.
From the legal publishers’ point of view, the greater availability of free resources is likely to make the
publishing of priced legal resources (particularly primary law and current awareness resources) more complicated.
Clementi and the opening up of the legal market pose a different challenge. MDPs and “Tesco law“ operations are
likely to require very different information resources to those traditionally provided by our publishers.
Changes in the legal education market are also having an effect on publishing as E-learning systems mature.
Another influence is the increased demands placed on law firms for sophisticated risk management systems and
compliance training.
The impact of technology on legal business is moving from the back office into client facing services.
As Richard Susskind predicted, law firms and barristers are now providing highly sophisticated online
resources to clients and as a marketing tool on the internet. In effect, they have become publishers themselves.
Clients too have become more demanding and they often expect to be able to access a law firm’s own information
resources. Multiple extranet provision and maintenance is an increasing overhead for law firms; will publishers
finally move into providing “collaboration spaces” as Richard Susskind predicted some years ago? The government
is also looking at collaboration online as a way of improving service delivery, such as with the PISCES initiative.
Recent Developments
In the last year we have seen publishers developing their electronic products and extending their offerings.
Informa publishing is one example where there has been a large increase in electronic supply. In this case
subscribers to paper copies of law reports series (such as Lloyds) were only given the option of the new
“bundled” paper and online product, at a significant price rise to reflect the new service. This was an
interesting tactic, particularly as the electronic versions of Lloyds were already available on Westlaw
so many subscribers in effect had to pay twice for the electronic versions. Whether Lloyds remains with
Westlaw once their current contract runs out we shall see, but it does suggest that the market could
fragment further in the future. More recently we have seen protracted negotiations on the hosting of
the Law Reports on Lexis; they are still on Westlaw who are also in the later stages of negotiations
to host the Weekly Law Reports, so the market is still very fluid.
Developments of this sort MAY be good for consumers in terms of pricing and choice, but with online resources,
I am not convinced that users want diversity as such. Indeed, many law firms would like to consolidate
their subscriptions, so even if subscriptions went down, the additional work needed to provide consolidated
versions to lawyers would probably outweigh any savings. Bundling is of particular concern to information
professionals and the discussion groups of BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) have
voiced concerns over this trend. We are working with publishers to develop a code of good practice,
currently in draft form on the
BIALL website.
Context is always innovative in their online provision and Justcite is an example of collaborative
technology entering the marketplace. TSO have also been moving into priced online provision and have
been marketing to law libraries more aggressively.
There has been a significant increase in electronic journal provision; I have been pleased to see
more of the Jordan’s titles arrive electronically.
Software Acquisitions, Divestments, Deals
Thomson (who own Sweet & Maxwell) were the first to really hit the market in diversification with their
purchase of the Elite practice management system. They were looking at the legal IT market and seeing
potential cross-over and profit from diversification into software provision, in particular supporting
CRM and Knowledge Management initiatives.
LexisNexis have also been very active over the last year with a whole series of different developments.
First, we saw a major divestment of the student title portfolio to OUP who have the relevant expertise
and flexibility to react to changes in the academic curriculum in the future.
Then, some 700 titles of the old Butterworths titles were transferred to a new publishing entity,
Tottel, managed by Jim Smith, a very experienced and well respected personality in the publishing
community. We also see them moving to exclusivity arrangements with the announcement that it will
be the sole provider of Factiva to the legal market (Factiva is highly significant to firms
developing extranets and CRM). We also see them moving into the software market with partnership
agreements and involvement in the development of a practice management system, Pilgrim, and they
are now taking ownership of the market leader in Law Firm CRM, Inter-Action. They have also indicated
there are difficulties in their negotiations with ICLR over their hosting the Law Reports.
There have also been other developments over the last year, which I summarise below.
Primary Legislation
Westlaw recognise that their online offering needs an overhaul and provide improvements in downloading and printing (more improvements are due over the next year).
Lawtel starts to differentiate itself on current awareness provision with its legislation calendar service.
LexisNexis improve the annotations online and do more “slicing and dicing” of their content into vertical subject offerings online and work on rationalising their online interfaces.
Context (Justis) work on integration with portal providers and internal systems and also start to look like a collaborative host as well as an online provider.
Increasingly sophisticated free resources like BAILII make it imperative for publishers to improve their “value added”.
Case Law
“paper only” provision declines whilst online provision moves to centre stage.
Owners of series re-value their content and move to protect their sources.
LexisNexis moves to rebrand All England as a one stop resource.
Historical series move online.
Next day (and next hour) provision improves.
Government publishing improves in speed, coverage and quality.
There is a trend towards full case transcript availability.
Publishers are increasingly challenged to demonstrated “value added”.
Commentary
Presentation has improved from all the major hosts. Designs are moving away from the rash of links which used to confuse navigation. Now online commentary is much easier to read and use. The quality of paper resources is also improving.
More multi disciplinary offerings are appearing, such as HR & accountancy content blended with legal material. Kluwer in particular is developing the potential MDP marketplace but others are starting to catch up. Thomson have been developing the HR advice market for a number of years via their Gee brand.
Niche publishers are really taking hold. PLC in particular is having an effect on the marketplace. I can see an increasing trend towards “white branding” of their content so that law firms can embed PLC into KM systems and access as part of CRM.
A return to expert systems technology. Early attempts were not very successful but now that case management and workflow have come of age I can see publishers offering more generic commentary plus workflow products.
Current Awareness & Journals
Free portals and gateways to legal information improve. Just to mention a few examples: Delia Venables and Infolaw, and Sarah Carter’s portal and LawBore.
BIALL launches LORD (Legal Resources Online), working in collaboration with publishers to provide a register of all UK & Irish online priced legal resources.
The biggest impact on the current awareness market is coming from law firms and barristers who are providing increasingly sophisticated KM and CRM initiatives and web sites. Publishers are having to differentiate their provision from the free legal information providers, either by providing incisive commentary (at a price, the LexisNexis approach) or by innovations in technology (Lawtel) or greater integration with Law Firm portals and KM systems (Context, Westlaw and LexisNexis).
Legal journals are also under fire from internet developments. Authors can now publish articles direct, so journals are moving towards the high quality authoritative peer review products on the one hand, and rapid-fire cross subject and multi-disciplinary offerings on the other.
The Future
Here are some of the issues and market trends that I believe the publishing industry will be looking at over the
year to come.
Integration
Publishers are themselves now software houses and can work with law firms as they make integration a business
critical issue. Publishers have a lot of experience in content management and CRM systems, so they could
provide the technology to help firms support their clients. Other areas where publishers are well placed
to take on consultancy work include taxonomy development and search engine technology. I suspect that
quite soon there will emerge a standard legal taxonomy and that one of the publishers will help the
LITIG (legal IT group) with its development.
Mobile working, instant messaging, collaboration and sophisticated KM and CRM are all issues that publishers
are looking at under this general heading.
Authorship
Publishing schedules are often affected by publishers’ dependence on semi-voluntary authors not being available
to provide content to agreed timescales. This is a huge risk factor. I suspect that the pace of change will
see publishers come to new arrangements with authors, bringing more authoring in-house and making more strategic
alliances with academic institutions. (This in turn may affect costs).
Globalisation and Outsourcing
Law firms and publishers are increasingly using offshore outsourcing to reduce costs and improve speed.
For publishers, outsourcing is particularly attractive, enabling them to offer a 24 hour service and
rapid turn around for current awareness. I think outsourcing is likely to increase and publishers will
provide consultancy to law firms.
Risk Management
As standards like Lexcel, ISO 7799-2 and 9000 etc become integral to the way law firms manage their business,
publishers are likely to have to increase their own risk management provisions, and also support the need for
information on implementation (think of how many titles have been published this year on Money Laundering, for example).
The Learning Market
Law firms have always needed to develop continuing education programmes for staff (and clients) but as more
firms invest in knowledge management, the issue of creating a truly “Learning Organisation” is becoming central
to survival. The demand for training (online, classroom and blended learning) is huge and I can see publishers
taking more interest in this revenue stream. I expect to see much closer relationships with academic institutions,
who themselves are under pressure to develop new revenue streams.
Strategic Issues for Publishers
I expect to see further dramatic shake-ups in the publishing industry, possibly more divestments of non-core parts
of business by the larger publishers and at the same time, some of the smaller publishers either merging or forming
strategic alliances in order to benefit from technology. This is bound to affect pricing policies. I also expect
to see more consultancy services and the development of spin-off services being offered by the legal publishing
industry, IT, CRM and management consultancy in particular.
This is just a quick “canter” through some of the trends I have spotted and some of the issues I have discussed
over the past year. It points to one of the most dramatic periods of change in legal publishing since online
services emerged in the 1990’s and it will be interesting to see how our publishers react to the huge array of
external factors now influencing the way they do business.
Ann Hemming is Information Manager of
Hugh James Solicitors and also Chair of the Legal Information Group of the
British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL).
Email ann.hemming@hughjames.com.
This article is based on a talk I gave at Online Information 2004 and, during my research and preparation,
I would like to give special thanks to staff at LexisNexis, Tottel publishers and Sweet & Maxwell who have
provided me with a great deal of insight into the world of legal publishing. I would also like to thank my
colleagues in the BIALL LIG group who work with me to maintain a good communications with the publishing
profession. The opinions expressed in the article are personal however and not attributable to any one source.
I must also stress that this view is given from a Law Firm perspective.
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