Legal & Business

Legal publishing is the largest market segment in the global professional publishing industry.

While print products such as books, and, to a lesser extent, newsletters and looseleafs, will continue to be integral to the delivery of legal information for the foreseeable future, the nature of the legal business demands the most up-to-date information that can be obtained at the touch of a keystroke.

Lawyers will continue to refer to case books in legal libraries, but to keep current in the ever-changing and time-constrained legal landscape they will need to rely increasingly on online directories and databases.

In addition, due to the complex nature of law, tools that seamlessly integrate various facets of a law practice, such as research and document filing, make the administrative side of the business much more manageable. These tools, software and Internet applications that link the practice of law with the business of running a law firm, fall under the catchphrase workflow solutions—a concept that has quickly become the name of the game in professional publishing. It’s a product strategy that the top three legal publishers—Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer—have all deployed to varying degrees and acknowledge to be the key to the future growth. The difference is now these companies, for the most part, are asking customers what they want instead of telling them what they need.