By Jason Wilson
It’s been a long time coming, but Thomson Reuters Legal’s (TRL) latest campaign (as reported by Joe Hodnicki over at the Law Librarian Blog) suggests the imminent death of the dreaded looseleaf service. In 18 years, we’ve never published such a creature (monstrosity) for the simple fact that they are, and remain, an inelegant device for learning and finding information. Binder-based books are awful, unwieldy, lack portability, discourage innovation in typographic design, and cost more in upkeep than simply acquiring a newly bound volume.
So imagine my surprise to find that TRL’s Print & New Media division is finally experimenting with the idea of getting rid of the looseleaf service. I had always assumed that the margins on the supplements were far better than reprinting the entire collection every year and shipping it to customers, and they may very well still be. But since AALL in Denver this year, I’ve come to understand that many law firms may have cut subscriptions to these services dramatically because they no longer have the library staff to ensure upkeep, so it doesn’t matter much if the margins are better, assuming subscriptions are in a rapid free fall. And if the Ribstein and Keatinge on Limited Liability Companies (Ribstein & Keatinge) experiment is any indication of what’s going on behind the scenes, then I would suspect sales are in fact declining and TRL is trying to find a way to maintain margins. Let’s examine this experiment a bit.
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