Funny Money, Some of It Squandered, in Law Publishing

The first of my series of Slaw contributions was entitled “Legal and Professional Publishing – It’s the Money, Stupid” and, it being from an era long-since forgotten, focused on the madness of small, low or negligible-profit law publishers trying to compete with the market giants. Of course, everything has changed since then, with all the focus being on new start-ups being massively funded and quickly acquiring outrageous market values. Yet, making actual profits from trading is something else. Extant owners and shareholders, if they are lucky, are able to profit hugely, as the startups in question are traded from one disreputable owner to the next, eventually landing, probably, at the likes of RELX, Thomson Reuters or Wolters Kluwer, at which point their historic trading losses are forgiven and forgotten. Still, it is worth asking about the money, that is real money, from actual customers; it’s a funny old game, feral capitalism.

Not a high-flying artificial intelligence-driven publisher, supported by venture capitalists, but, merely by way of example and not to focus excessively on it, looking at the sale, in England, of Globe Law and Business, one has to wonder why, just as Thomson Reuters sells off a majority interest in its $490m global print business, now known as Westbridge Print, such a tiny entity is acquired by RELX? I would not be greatly surprised if, before not too long, it were to disappear as a brand and some of its existing products, and maybe some of those who rely on it for their incomes, were to be discontinued. Knowing personally and having much affection for some of the people in question, I truly hope that is not the case. Some such transactions, at face value, can lead to the view that sometimes, though not always, the purpose in starting a small business is not to grow profitably, nor to create well-paying jobs for employees, nor change the world for the better, nor make a difference, but rather, just to sell it to a big business, with the harsh reality and consequences of profitability, or rather the lack of it, coming subsequently.

The newly entitled Westbridge Print views itself as a provider of information, primarily in print format and via ProView, to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools and corporations. It also seeks to leverage its capabilities through offering commercial printing services to a range of book publishers. The business serves customers primarily in the USA, Canada and the UK.

At the same time and somewhat more logically, major, established information businesses usually understand that there is a time to build organically and a time to make overpriced acquisitions and then have all the cost and risk of trying to integrate them successfully to fit existing systems and satisfy the needs of existing customers. Yet, legal information publishing has had its share of unsuccessful attempts at profitably integrating acquisitions. It would not be surprising to see a shift in favour of organic growth, as might be inferred from recent developments at Thomson Reuters, with the launch of Thomson, a proprietary large language model built specifically for professional work. With this, and parallel initiatives at RELX (Lexis Nexis) and even Wolters Kluwer, if they listen to what customers actually want, and if they do not annihilate us all first, they may well increase the life of the competitive duopoly and, into the future, leave less room for noisy upstarts, particularly those whose boastfulness sometimes matches their incompetence. Critically, as others have discovered painfully, the grownups have the combination of money, knowhow, content, independence and professionalism to achieve this. Yet, if ROSS Intelligence were to have its way, Thomson Reuters might be wounded by the sheer number of times that it has to return to the Appeals Court in never-ending AI-related litigation. TR’s headache might be even worsening significantly, as it faces the possibility of a class action arising from having paid $650m to acquire Casetext in 2023.The allegation, apparently, is that it used the acquisition to neutralise a competitive threat, having eliminated Casetext as a competitor. It seems as if continued and endless and possibly vexatious litigation over matters such as this can be somewhat safely predicted.

As to the proceeds of highly profitable law publishing, including those derived from disposals and transfers, as is the case universally, they are not flowing in the direction of those whose interests deserve to be prioritised, notably the customers, suppliers and the everyday employees of the industry. While, for example, Legal 500/Legalease, apparently, according to Wikipedia, a London living wage employer, has had its employees striking over low pay, while at the same time its flagship legal directory published a new edition containing a glitch which resulted in the posting of much publicised and ridiculed unfiltered and embarrassing remarks, one might ponder upon quality and standards in a machine-driven world.

As ever, the billionaire and multi-millionaire technology-fascists and their wannabes, the unworthy, the unscrupulous, the highest-level directors and self-obsessed owners are those in receipt of the greatest rewards for the least contribution. Plus ça change.

On what might turn out to be a more positive note, the announcement that Informa PLC intends to purchase, from Blackstone, the latter’s business-to-business competitor, Clarion and to separate Informa from Taylor & Francis, its publishing business. It would appear that a sale or spin-off of the publishing business are under consideration. For purposes of law publishing, the relevance of the Taylor & Francis news is that it is a substantial law publisher, via the T&F and Routledge brands, publishing an enviable, impressive and market-leading portfolio of titles primarily, but not at all exclusively in maritime, insurance and commercial law. The surprise is that the separation was not done many years ago and more recently when Lloyds of London Press/Lloyds List, together with i-Law were sold by Informa. I believe that much of the content presently hosted on i-Law is licensed from Informa and without that, there would be little left on the electronic platform. Taylor & Francis is said to have revenues approaching $1 billion, growing at about 4% a year. Therefore, by any measure, it is significant as a stand-alone business, a disposal and acquisition or as a candidate for break-up, given its range of markets, such as legal and professional ones, which it serves. I have no doubt that there would be third-party interest in it, and speculation abounds on the topic, but I struggle to see it as a unified entity in the future.

And finally, in the USA, Vancouver-headquartered Clio has acquired Learned Hand, an AI company building technology specifically for judges and courts.