LAWTECH GURU BLOG by Jeff Beard

Lexis-West Merger Announced

In breaking news today, Lexis and West stunned the legal community by announcing their plans for merging the two legal publishers. Hot on the heels of their combined ABA TECHSHOW keynote, Louis Andreozzi, president and chief executive officer of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets, and Mike Wilens, president of West, jointly announced the merger in an early press conference today.

The new company will be called, appropriately enough, WestLexOne to convey that it will be the one source for all lawyers' legal research and practice needs. (I would have preferred the simpler "WestOne" myself, but it was probably shot down by the marketing folks due to the possible connotation that "West won".)

As Lou Andreozzi indicated, there has been a solid trend of consolidation within the legal community, both among law firms and their service providers. He pointed to Lexis' very recent acquisition of Time Matters and Billing Matters from DATA.TXT Corporation for practice management, and also of Applied Discovery for serving the increasing need for electronic discovery services. Likewise, West acquired ProLaw and Elite over the past several years. Mike Wilens was quick to allay concerns that any of these products or services would be cut in the merger, citing a strong demand for all of them in their respective markets.

Obviously, it is too soon to tell how this will impact the legal market, so stay tuned for updates. One thing's for certain: Another practice resource is leveraged for offering outstanding legal services.

[Just to be on the safe side, if you read this far and still believe it's true: April Fools. If you're interested in following other April 1st parodies, jokes, and hoaxes, Erik Heels is maintaining a list over at ParodyLaw.com.]