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

thumb|upright|LexisNexis office in Markham, a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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. 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. 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 1967, the OSBA signed a contract with Data Corporation, a local defense contractor, to build OBAR based on the OSBA's written specifications. (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. Mead hired the Arthur D. Little consulting firm to study the business possibilities for the Data Central technology. After Mead asked for a practicing lawyer on the team, Jerome Rubin, a Harvard-trained attorney with 20 years of experience was included. 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. The original OBAR terminals were belatedly replaced with CRT text terminals in 1970.

In February 1970, Mead reorganized Data Corporation's Information Systems Division into a new Mead subsidiary called Mead Data Central (MDC). 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.

thumb|upright=0.5|The old LexisNexis logo

Rubin then hired a new team to build an entirely new information service dedicated exclusively to legal research. and designed a business plan, marketing strategy, and training program. To persuade American lawyers to use LEXIS (at a time when computer literacy was rare), MDC used aggressive marketing, sales, and training campaigns. 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. Its communications processor could handle 62 terminals simultaneously with transmission speed at 120 characters per second per user. A judge ruled against Toyota, and the company appealed the decision. Mead lost on appeal in 1989 when the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held that there was little chance of consumer confusion. 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. 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. <!-- stub out for Matthew Bender (This section redirects from :Matthew Bender):

Matthew Bender

"Matthew Bender & Company was founded in Albany and New York City in 1804 by William Gould and David Banks and was known as Gould and Banks. They had offices on Wall Street in New York City and at 104 State Street, Albany. The Albany offices later moved to 473-475 Broadway."

...

"Asked about the rationale behind the closing of the office in Albany, where the company was founded in 1887, Osborn said LexisNexis was 'always looking for ways of running more efficiently.'"

"The Bender company was sold to the Times Mirror Co. in 1963, and none of the family were involved in the business after the sale. Matthew Bender IV later became vice president of Clark Boardman Co., a New York City-based law book publisher."

...

-->Also in 2000, the company acquired the American legal publisher Matthew Bender from Times Mirror. In 2002, it acquired a Canadian research database company, Quicklaw. In 2002, LexisNexis acquired 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.

Sheshunoff Information Services, A.S. Pratt, & Alex Information (collectively, SIS), founded in 1972, is a print and electronic publishing company that provides information to financial and legal professionals in the banking industry, as well as online training and tools for financial institutions. SIS was founded in 1971 by Alex and Gabrielle Sheshunoff. The company became recognized for providing guidance and analysis to the banking industry. In 1988 Thompson Media, a division of Thomson Reuters, acquired the company. Separately, the Sheshunoffs began publishing Alex Information products.

In 1995, SIS acquired A.S. Pratt & Sons. Established in 1933, Pratt's Letter is believed to be the second oldest continuously published newsletter in the country behind Kiplinger's Washington Letter, which began publication in 1923. A.S. Pratt is a provider of regulatory law and compliance work tools for the financial services industry.

Gabrielle Sheshunoff returned in 2004 to unite the AlexInformation, Sheshunoff, and A.S. Pratt brands before it was sold to Thompson in 2008.

In November 2014, LexisNexis Risk Solutions bought Health Market Science (HMS), a supplier of data about US healthcare professionals.

In May 2022, LexisNexis acquired the behavioral biometrics technology provider, BehavioSec for an undisclosed sum.

Data breach

On March 9, 2005, LexisNexis made the theft of personal information of Seisint users public. It was originally estimated that 32,000 users were affected, but that number greatly increased to over 310,000. Affected persons were provided with free fraud insurance and credit bureau reports for a year. However, no reports of identity theft or fraud were discovered to have stemmed from the security breach. The hackers stole passwords, names, addresses, and Social Security and driver's license numbers of customers of LexisNexis's Seisint division. Seisint collects data on individuals that's used by law enforcement agencies and private companies for debt recovery, fraud detection and other services.

Commercial products

LexisNexis services are delivered via two websites that require separate paid subscriptions.

In 2000, Lexis began building a library of briefs and motions. In addition to this, Lexis also has libraries of statutes, case judgments and opinions for jurisdictions such as France, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa, and the United Kingdom as well as databases of law review and legal journal articles for countries for which materials are available.

Previously, LexisNexis had a stripped-down free version (known as LexisOne) but this has been discontinued

and replaced by Lexis Communities, which provides news and blogs across a variety of legal areas.

Time Matters is a LexisNexis-branded software offering. Lexis for Microsoft Office is a LexisNexis-branded software offering.

In France, the UK and Australia, LexisNexis publishes books, magazines and journals, both in hard copy and online. Titles include Taxation Magazine, Lawyers Weekly and La Semaine Juridique.

Lastly, LexisNexis focused on generative AI tool for attorneys called LexisNexis Precision that can produce memos defining key legal concepts, identify and summarize new case developments, and generate common legal documents.

LexisNexis Asia

In 2024, LexisNexis celebrated Asia's Future Leaders of the Legal Profession vide its publication in their website.

LexisNexis UK

Butterworths

The firm that became LexisNexis UK was founded in 1818 by Henry Butterworth (1786–1860). He was a pupil at King Henry VIII School, Coventry. He left Coventry, was apprenticed to his uncle Joseph Butterworth, the great law bookseller of Fleet Street. In 1818, however, disagreement between them as to the terms of partnership made Henry set up on his own account at the corner of Middle Temple Gate (7 Fleet Street), where he became the well-known Queen's Law Bookseller.

Butterworths was acquired by International Publishing Corporation in 1965; IPC was acquired by the Reed Group in 1970. Heinemann Professional Publishing was merged with Butterworths Scientific in 1990 to form Butterworth-Heinemann. The Butterworths publishing business is now owned and operated in the UK by Reed Elsevier (UK) Ltd, a company in the Reed Elsevier Group. Publications continue to be produced by RELX (UK) Ltd using the "LexisNexis", "Butterworths" and "Tolley" trade marks. Such publications include Halsbury's Laws of England and the All England Law Reports, amongst others.

The Butterworths name is also used to publish works in many countries such as Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

LexisNexis also produces a range of software, services and products which are designed to support the practice of the legal profession. For example, case management systems, customer relationship management systems ("CRMs") and proofreading tools for Microsoft Office.

Business Insight Solutions offers news and business content and market intelligence tools. It is a global provider of news and business information and market intelligence tools for professionals in risk management, corporate, political, media, and academic markets.

In 2025, LexisNexis launched Protégé, a personalized AI-powered legal assistant.

Criticism and cases

Illegal collection and sale of personal data

In 2022, LexisNexis Risk Solutions was sued by immigration advocates for allegedly violating Illinois law by collecting and combining extensive personal information and selling it to third parties, including federal immigration authorities. The lawsuit claimed that the company's practices posed "a grave threat to civil liberties."

Critics accused LexisNexis of violating individuals' privacy rights by providing addresses, phone numbers, relatives' names, and more through the data being sold to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In November 2019, several legal scholars and human rights activists called on LexisNexis to cease work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement because their work directly contributes to the deportation of undocumented migrants.

Allegations of surveilling pregnant women

LexisNexis faces accusations for selling data on pregnant women and abortion-related information. Police forces have been using tools like Lexis to aid in enforcing abortion laws. St. Louis County spend almost $25,000 on LexisNexis products in 2021. The Dallas, Houston and Missouri Police department also spend tens of thousands of dollars on undisclosed LexisNexis products.

Violation of Daniel's Law

On March 4, 2024, two anonymous plaintiffs in New Jersey filed a class-action lawsuit against LexisNexis, stating that they violated Daniel's Law. In New Jersey, Daniel's Law includes a clause requiring that if websites have published certain personal information regarding certain government officials, and a request to take it down by an authorized party is issued, such a request must be honored. The lawsuit represents over 18,000 individuals, and alleges that not only were such requests not honored, but those who filed requests were punished by LexisNexis, who "campaign[ed] to freeze the credit reports of Plaintiffs and others", and incorrectly reported them as victims of identity theft. Furthermore, additional allegations state that LexisNexis published "comprehensive reports on other family members (including minor children as young as 13 years old)", and that as of the time of the lawsuit, none of the attempts to have LexisNexis unfreeze the credit reports have been honored. The complaint claims that LexisNexis did so without plaintiffs' authorization in order to promote its Lexis Personal Records Products.

Other privacy cases

LexisNexis has been in the news for a number of data privacy issues. In 2023, the company was fined €100,000 by the French data protection authority, CNIL, for failing to properly inform individuals about how their data was being used. The CNIL found that LexisNexis had not provided clear and concise information about its data collection and processing practices, and that it had not obtained the necessary consent from individuals to use their data.

LexisNexis has also been criticized for its use of facial recognition technology. In 2022, the company was sued by a group of privacy advocates who alleged that it was illegally using facial recognition technology to scan images of people without their consent. LexisNexis has denied the allegations; the case is still pending.

The company has also been accused of collecting and storing excessive amounts of data about individuals. In 2021, a report by the Norwegian Consumer Council found that LexisNexis had collected data on millions of people, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, and social media activity. The report also found that LexisNexis was sharing this data with third-party companies without the knowledge or consent of the individuals involved.

Port scanning

See also

  • AustLII
  • CanLII
  • CaseMap
  • HeinOnline
  • The Law of Advertising and Mass Communications
  • LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell
  • LexisNexis Risk Solutions
  • Time Matters
  • Westlaw
  • Wexis

References

Further reading

  • LexisNexis® 40 UNDER 40 Asia List & LexisNexis® 40 UNDER 40 Southeast Asia List