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.