Search
This area does not yet contain any content.
Justinian News

Delay update ... "Extraordinary and excessive" delay - by the litigants ... Contest on costs ... Getting to grips with Qld industrial law takes time ... What is a "worker"? ... What is an "injury"? ... Justice Jenni frigging around ... Slow grind for earnest Circuiteer ... From judges' associate Ginger Snatch ... Read more >>

 

Politics Media Law Society


A biopsy on bias ... Darryl Rangiah and Oscar Wilde … A unity ticket … White flags at Ultimo … The Hyphen … BBC also on the ropes … Cease – FIRE … Why is Murdoch’s bias always wrong about everything? ... Read on >> 

This area does not yet contain any content.
Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

From the cutting room floor...Handsy Heydon goes to Perth ... Celebrity tour ... Conferenceville ... Dicey's job application speech from 2002 ... Other High Court judges mocked as "vegetables" ... Mason CJ ridiculed ... Speech bowdlerised for public consumption ... Courage of conviction MIA ... From our National Affairs Correspondent ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


Bradley John Murdoch RIP ... Much more than the headlines ... Devoted family man ... Respected prisoner ... Great in the kitchen ... Generous and gentle ... Plus, the three missing KCs ... Former Law Institute President Christopher Dale issues a statement on behalf of the family ... More >> 

Justinian's Bloggers

London Calling ... Sizzling in the Old Dart ... Story of the complaining law graduate ... Tattle Life brought to book ... Beckham family feud over royal gong ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt's postcard ... Read more >> 

"What you are not being told by the media anywhere is that the death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."

Charlie Kirk, American conservative and conspiracy theorist on the Texas floods ... The Charlie Kirk Show, July 9, 2025  Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Zeitgeist litigation ... Matt Collins KC on live-streaming of high-profile trials ... Social media nightmare ... Abuse of barristers ... Chilling emails ... Trials as a form of public entertainment ... Courts sleepwalking into a dangerous zone ... Framework needed to balance competing interests ... Paper delivered to Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference ... Read more >> 


Justinian's archive

The Circumlocution Office ... "Reform" of legal fees - four centuries of chicanery ... Tulkinghorn awards prizes for "reforms" that increase legal costs ... Jacking-up revenue by replacing "necessary or proper" costs with "fair and reasonable" costs ... From Justinian's Archive, January 17, 2012 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« David Lemmings | Main | Inside Tom Hughes' defamation machine »
Tuesday
Aug302016

Poms take the online English Reports back to the bosom

Talk about disruption ... Council of Law Reporting sends divorce papers to LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters for publication in Australia, Canada, NZ and USA ... The old law publishing world coming apart ... End of the oligopoly in sight 

Old world law publishing getting all shook-up

THE Australian Law Librarians Conference in Melbourne last week, turned out to be more intriguing than anticipated.  

In attendance was Kevin Laws, the CEO of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales.  

Kevin announced that his outfit was in the process of divorce proceedings and that for the former colonies LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters would no longer operate the online services of The Law Reports, the official English series for the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.  

He said that the process of "disaggregation" had commenced and that the large, traditional law publishers from January 1, 2017 will not provide online services for subscribers in Australia, Canada, NZ and USA.  

Thereafter these services will be supplied directly by the council at ICLR Online.    

This will affect the appeal cases, Chancery, Family and Queen's Bench divisions, also the Weekly Law Reports, the Industrial Case Reports, the Business Law Reports and the Public and Third Sector Law Reports.  

See announcement here   

For now, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters will continue to be the publishers for the UK and the Republic of Ireland, but ICLR is seeing how the divorce works out in Australia, Canada, etc. before taking the next step of bringing those jurisdiction in-house.  

A number of big subscribers have already bought annual subscriptions to these service from LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters, so there's likely to be a scramble for refunds.  

ICLR says that it is a registered charity and operates on a non-profit basis:   

"Our only concern is to ensure that we provide you with the most accurate account of English common law and to generate only sufficient income to cover our operating costs. Our subscription rates reflect this."  

Users can get a seven day free trial and a quote here

ICLR doesn't quite explain its reasons for dumping LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters online, only saying:  

"Licensing our law reports to commercial publishers was an important development as we moved from print to online. However, following the celebration last year of ICLR's 150th anniversary, we must now prepare for the future."  

That means they'll celebrate by being "in control of the content that we author and publish". At the moment, the hard copy versions are still going strong in the motherland and the colonies. 

This came close on the heels of the launch celebrations of the BarNet Jade subsidiary, Little William Bourke, taking over from LexisNexis' publication of the Victorian Reports - hard copy and online. There were cocktails, speeches, lemon and coconut cake and enormous merriment at functions in Melbourne and Sydney. 

BatNet Jade's Ben Williams, Sue Yap and Michael Green after huge helpings of cake

LexisNexis, and its predecessor companies, had published the Victorian Reports for over 100 years. Little William Bourke has a five year control with the Victorian Council of Law Reporting and as well as a subscription service has implemented a pay-per-view system.   

Word out of last week's librarians' knees-up is that the law reporting councils are getting fed-up with the manner in which the mainstream publishers are managing the business. They want more accountability on how they are taking users into the "journey of facilitating access to justice".  

Victoria was the first to bolt out of the stable, now the Brits and all the other law reporting councils in Australia are looking at the new model. 

I'll put you through to Gem of the Year in customer service

The librarians had their cocktail reception at the Old Melbourne Gaol and, amid death-like stares from some of the competitors, Ian Ira from Jade won the customer service award, based on popular votes. He followed in the wake of the 2014 customer service honcho, Sue Yap, also from Jade.  

The disruption is too much.  

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Editor Permission Required
You must have editing permission for this entry in order to post comments.