Law publishers
Law publishing – the end of print?
There’s too much in favour of print to bury it prematurely, but we know that particular types of print are under severe threat from the disruptive influences of the internet. The continuing decline of newsprint in the face of free news online has been well documented. Trade magazines also are falling like ninepins as their […]
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Freemium? – pah!
I would like to see the back of the word “freemium” – it’s ugly, contrived and smacks of an in joke. More importantly, it does not describe anything new or concrete. The fundamental concept underpinning a “freemium” service – something offered for free to get someone to pay for something else – is as old […]
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JustCite ”” an umbrella index of the law
In the early 1990s Justis Publishing provided electronic access to the Law Reports, Weekly Law Reports and other series. The first to do so, it still supplies online cases and legislation on its full-text Justis legal library. But the company saw how an aspect of Justis could be expanded into a new service: one that […]
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Sweet & Maxwell’s new web presence
As the first part of the process of redesigning our new-look website (www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk) we embarked on a customer research and usability study to understand exactly what our customers wanted from our site as a channel for purchasing publications (books, journals, looseleafs and CDs), sourcing useful information about these (eg checklists and filing instructions) and finding […]
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Law publishing at the crossroads
You? In the current climate of rapid technological change, upheavals in the legal profession and global recession, what does the future hold for law publishing? The publishing revolution I have been fortunate to have been involved at first hand in the entire modern publishing revolution. When I first started out in law publishing, authors […]
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Open access Scottish law reports
Session Cases, published by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting, are the nearest thing Scotland has to an “official” law reports series. Uniquely in Scotland they are prepared by practising advocates (barristers) whilst the judges have the opportunity to revise the reports of their cases before they are published. The Practice Notes (Practice Directions) of […]
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New online ventures for OUP
Oxford University Press has made its first foray into online information for lawyers and legal researchers. The launch of three new services marks a significant phase in Oxford’s shift from a traditional academic print publisher, to one which now offers a broad range of services in book, journal, looseleaf and online form, and which is […]
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Justis extend Irish reports
Justis are exclusively extending their coverage of the Irish Reports on Justis by 81 years, all the way back to 1838. They also become the first publisher in Ireland to offer the authoritative case reports as printable PDFs replicating original pagination. Sinéad Nà Chúlacháin, Editor of the Irish Reports at the Incorporated Council of Law […]
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The law publishers and Web 2.0
(with James Mullan) Web 2.0 has revolutionised publishing. Technologies like blogs, wikis and RSS have made the publishing process so easy that countless millions are now publishers and yet more millions are contributors. And no longer is publishing simply about broadcasting a message one to many; with the facility for users to respond and contribute, […]
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Criminal Law Week acquired by Sweet & Maxwell
Sweet & Maxwell (via Thomson Reuters) has acquired leading independent legal publication Criminal Law Week which provides digests of case decisions and new legislation to 15,000 criminal law practitioners. The online version gives access to a database of 12,000 digests of cases, statutes and statutory instruments. There are extensive search tools as well as links […]
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Update on Pay As You Go
Readers may recall my article in the July/August 2006 issue about the dilemma my firm is experiencing in deciding whether to subscribe to one of many online legal resources (here). Is it worth the considerable cost involved? I ended my article with a plea to LexisNexis to come forward with a Pay As You Go […]
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