Trends In Legal Publishing: Print v. Electronic Access
Summary:
The LTRC conducted a survey of U.S. based for-profit publishers of print legal publications. The 76 selected publishers were contacted via e-mail or telephone survey. 49 responded to the survey, for a response rate of 64%. The respondents included owners, presidents, vice-presidents, and marketing directors.
Respondents represent the whole of legal publishing in terms of company size (based on a combination of a prescribed range of gross income and number of employees), geographic coverage (based on combinations of responses: International, National, Regional, State and all permutations), and scope of material (based on combination of responses: Primary, Secondary, Reference, Other and all permutations). The companies averaged 42 years in the legal publishing industry.
About half of the legal publishers surveyed produce materials in both CD-ROM and Internet formats. The numbers of publishers with offerings of only CD-ROM or only Internet are almost equal, while a very low number (16%) offer no digital formats. However, print is the dominant format at 95%, while CD-ROM and Internet products only make up roughly a quarter of total output.
While most publishers do not plan to exceed print production with electronic in the next three years, a high percentage (88%) plan to convert print titles to digital. Higher than the commitment to create digital product is the commitment to continue to offer print titles. Many respondents commented that until the market would bear such a dramatic shift, their products will still be available in print, though the prices for this format would inevitably continue to rise.
In the future, print products will not be mirrored by their online counterparts. A little over half of the respondents are currently creating or intend to create "bundled" or integrated online products. These online resources combine all or some of the print sources that would allow the user access to a "library" of information, taking advantage of digital enhancements such as searchability and currency.
When asked to compare the cost of print, CD-ROM, or Internet access to the consumer, most publishers reported that print was priced higher than the other mediums. When asked to speculate on pricing structures of online legal materials in the future responses varied from "slightly go up" to "less expensive, less complicated licensing/user agreements".
