Lexis UK
The "big blue" of UK legal information services, historically mainly in publishing services, but with a presence in all sectors notably legal IT and tax publishing.
Lexis are part of the global Reed Elsevier group and in the UK best known as the Butterworths, IRS and Tolley brands in publishing. Globally Thomson Reuters (Elite/Sweet &Maxwell) Reed Elsevier (Lexis/Butterworths/VisualFiles/Axxia) and Wolters Kluwer (CCH) dominate the professional information services field. The global threesome play out in the UK in different ways, with legal IT players such as IRIS and transaction support publishers such as PLC also playing significant parts. Lexis is the largest player best known for Halsbury and encyclopaedic works, but also most exposed to the changes in publishing trends currently. Lexis UK have tried repositioning through IT and are tackling transactional service development aggressively currently. Historically the sales and profit leader in the market, their fortunes have been mixed recently. Complex cross reporting and some key legal services titles also been shared with Reed Business Information in another group division makes comparison with, eg EGi and XpertHR difficult. Accounts data is well hidden within the large Reed Elsevier group overall and the UK division of it but to see how this market plays out and Lexis UK?s leading role in the Due Diligence Profile is essential reading.