LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer information. During the 1970s, LexisNexis began to make legal and journalistic documents more accessible electronically. the company had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records–related information. The company is a subsidiary of RELX.
History
LexisNexis is owned by RELX (formerly known as Reed Elsevier).
According to Trudi Bellardo Hahn and Charles P. Bourne, LexisNexis (originally founded as LEXIS) is historically significant because it was the first of the early information services to both envision and actually bring about a future in which large populations of end users would directly interact with computer databases, rather than going through professional intermediaries like librarians. Available through IEEE Xplore. The developers of several other early information services in the 1970s harbored similar ambitions (e.g., OCLC's WorldCat), but met with financial, structural, and technological constraints and were forced to retreat to the professional intermediary model until the early 1990s.
An attorney named John Horty began to explore the use of CALR technology in 1956 to support his work on comparative hospital law at the University of Pittsburgh Health Law Center. Available through IEEE Xplore. Horty was surprised to discover the extent to which the laws governing hospital administration varied from one state to another across the United States and began building a computer database to help him keep track of it all.
In 1965, Horty's work inspired the Ohio State Bar Association (OSBA) to independently develop its own CALR system, Ohio Bar Automated Research (OBAR). Available through IEEE Xplore. In 1967, the OSBA signed a contract with Data Corporation, a local defense contractor, to build OBAR based on the OSBA's written specifications. Data proceeded to implement OBAR on Data Central, an interactive full-text search system originally developed in 1964 as Recon Central to help U.S. Air Force intelligence analysts search text summaries of the contents of aerial and satellite reconnaissance photographs. Available through IEEE Xplore. (Before computer vision was invented, text summaries were manually prepared by enlisted personnel called "photo interpreters"; analysts then used those summaries as a catalog to retrieve photographs from which they could draw inferences about enemy strategy.)
In 1968, paper manufacturer Mead Corporation purchased Data Corporation for $6 million to gain control of its inkjet printing technology. Available through IEEE Xplore. Mead hired the Arthur D. Little consulting firm to study the business possibilities for the Data Central technology. Arthur D. Little dispatched a team of consultants from New York to Ohio led by H. Donald Wilson. Available through IEEE Xplore. After Mead asked for a practicing lawyer on the team, Jerome Rubin, a Harvard-trained attorney with 20 years of experience was included. Available through IEEE Xplore. The resulting study concluded that the nonlegal market was nonexistent, the legal market had potential, and OBAR needed to be rebuilt to profitably exploit that market. At the time, OBAR searches often took up to five hours to complete if more than one user was online, and its original terminals were noisy Teletypes with slow transmission rates of 10 characters per second. Available through IEEE Xplore. The original OBAR terminals were belatedly replaced with CRT text terminals in 1970. OBAR also had quality control issues; Rubin later recalled that its data was "unacceptably dirty." Available through IEEE Xplore.
In February 1970, Mead reorganized Data Corporation's Information Systems Division into a new Mead subsidiary called Mead Data Central (MDC). Wilson and Rubin, respectively, were installed as president and vice president. A year later, Mead bought out the OSBA's interests in the OBAR project, and OBAR disappeared from the historical record after that point.
After Wilson was put in charge, he became reluctant to implement his own study's recommendation to abandon the OBAR/Data Central work to date and start over. Available through IEEE Xplore. In September 1971, Mead's management relegated Wilson to vice chairman of the board (i.e., a nonoperational role) and elevated Rubin to president of MDC. Rubin pushed the legacy Data Central technology back to Mead Corporation. Under a newly organized division, Mead Technical Laboratories, Data Central continued to operate as a service bureau for nonlegal applications until 1980. Available through IEEE Xplore.
Rubin then hired a new team to build an entirely new information service dedicated exclusively to legal research. He coined a new name, LEXIS, from "lex", the Latin word for law, and "IS" for "information service". After several iterations, the original functional and performance specifications were finalized by Rubin and executive vice president Bob Bennett in late summer 1972. System designer Edward Gottsman supervised the implementation of the specifications as working computer code. At the same time, Rubin and Bennett orchestrated the necessary keyboarding of the legal materials to be provided through LEXIS, Available through IEEE Xplore. and designed a business plan, marketing strategy, and training program. MDC's corporate headquarters were moved to New York City, while the data center stayed in Dayton, Ohio.
LEXIS was the first information service to directly serve end users. Rubin later explained that they were trying "to crack the librarian barrier. Our goal was to get a LEXIS terminal on every lawyer's desk." At the time, law firm libraries had paper indices that librarians searched through on behalf of lawyers; the idea of LEXIS was to allow lawyers to do their research themselves using a LEXIS terminal. To persuade American lawyers to use LEXIS (at a time when computer literacy was rare), MDC used aggressive marketing, sales, and training campaigns.
On April 2, 1973, MDC publicly launched LEXIS at a press conference in New York City, with libraries of New York and Ohio case law as well as a separate library of federal tax materials. Available through IEEE Xplore. By the end of that year, the LEXIS database had reached two billion characters in size and added the entire United States Code, as well as the United States Reports from 1938 through 1973.
By 1974, LEXIS was running on an IBM 370/155 computer in Ohio supported by a set of IBM 3330 disk storage units which could store up to about 4 billion characters. Available through IEEE Xplore. Its communications processor could handle 62 terminals simultaneously with transmission speed at 120 characters per second per user. On this platform, LEXIS was able to execute over 90% of searches within fewer than five seconds. Over 100 text terminals had been deployed to various legal offices (i.e., law firms and government agencies) and over 4,000 users had been trained.
By 1975, the LEXIS database had grown to 5 billion characters and could handle up to 200 terminals simultaneously. By 1976, the LEXIS database included case law from six states, plus various federal materials. MDC turned a profit for the first time in 1977.
In 1980, LEXIS completed its hand-keyed electronic database of all extant U.S. federal and state cases. The NEXIS service, added that same year, provided journalists with a searchable database of news articles.
In September 1981, Rubin and several of his allies (including Bennett and Gottsman) left Mead Data Central to pursue other opportunities.
When Toyota launched the Lexus line of luxury vehicles in 1989, Mead Data Central sued for trademark infringement on the grounds that consumers of upscale products (like lawyers) might confuse "Lexus" with "Lexis". A market research survey asked consumers to identify the spoken word "Lexis". Survey results showed that a nominal number of people thought of the computerized legal search system; a similarly small number thought of Toyota's luxury car division.A far greater number, although by no means a majority, thought of a television character; most thought of nothing at all. A judge ruled against Toyota, and the company appealed the decision.Mead Data Cent. v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. 702 F.Supp. 1031 (1988) Mead lost on appeal in 1989 when the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held that there was little chance of consumer confusion.Mead Data Cent., Inc. v. Toyota Motor Sales 875 F.2d 1026 (1989) Today, the two companies have an amicable business relationship, and in 2002 implemented a joint promotion called "Win a Lexus on Lexis!"
In 1988, Mead acquired the Michie Company, a legal publisher, from Macmillan.
In December 1994, Mead sold the LexisNexis system to Reed Elsevier for $1.5 billion. The U.S. state of Illinois subsequently audited Mead's income tax returns and charged Mead an additional $4 million in income tax and penalties for the sale of LexisNexis; Mead paid the tax under protest, then sued for a refund in an Illinois state court. On April 15, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Mead that the Illinois courts had incorrectly applied the Court's precedents on whether Illinois could constitutionally apply its income tax to Mead, an out-of-state, Ohio-based corporation.MeadWestvaco Corp. v. Illinois Dep't. of Revenue, 553 U.S. 16 (2008). The Court reversed and remanded so the lower courts could apply the correct test and determine whether Mead and Lexis were a "unitary" business.
In 1997, LexisNexis acquired 52 legal titles (including the Lawyers' Edition) owned by the Thomson Corporation. Thomson was required to sell the titles as a condition of acquiring competing publisher West.
In 1998, Reed Elsevier acquired Shepard's Citations and made it part of LexisNexis. Before electronic citators like Westlaw's KeyCite appeared, Shepard's was the only legal citation service which attempted to provide comprehensive coverage of American law.
In 2019, LexisNexis announced a joint venture with Knowable, a leader in contract data analytics.
In February 2020, LexisNexis transitioned its database services to the Amazon Web Services cloud architecture, and shut down its legacy mainframes and servers.
In 2020, Estates Gazette and the remaining business of Reed Business Information became part of LexisNexis.
Acquisitions
In 2000, LexisNexis purchased RiskWise, a St. Cloud, Minnesota company, and acquired the American legal publisher Matthew Bender from Times Mirror. Two years later, it acquired a Canadian research database company Quicklaw, as well as the Ohio legal publisher Anderson Publishing. In 2004, Reed Elsevier Group, parent company of LexisNexis, purchased Seisint, Inc., from founder Michael Brauser of Boca Raton, Florida. Seisint housed and operated the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX).
In February 2008, Reed Elsevier purchased data aggregator ChoicePoint (previous NYSE ticker symbol CPS) in a cash deal for US$3.6 billion. The company was rebranded as LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
In 2013, LexisNexis, together with Reed Elsevier Properties SA, acquired publishing brands and businesses of Sheshunoff and A.S. Pratt from Thompson Media Group.