Parent company Thomson Reuters Headquarters location Eagan, Minnesota Founded 1872 Nonfiction topics Law | Country of origin United States Founder John B. West Publication types Books, databases | |
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Headquarters Eagan, Minnesota, United States Parent organization Thomson Reuters Corporation Subsidiaries FindLaw, Westlaw Europe, Verisqil, Inc., ProLaw, Inc. | ||
West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West has been one of the most prominent publishers of legal materials in the United States. Its headquarters is in Eagan, Minnesota; it also has an office in Rochester, New York, and had an office in Cleveland, Ohio, until it closed in 2010. Organizationally, West is part of the global legal division of Thomson Reuters.
History
West Publishing was founded by John B. West and his brother Horatio in 1872 in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is best known for establishing the National Reporter System, a system of regional reporters, each of which became known for reporting state court appellate decisions within its region. West also reports decisions of the federal Courts of Appeals in the Federal Reporter and of the federal district courts in the Federal Supplement, and retroactively republished the decisions of all lower federal courts predating the NRS in Federal Cases. All these reporters are also part of the NRS, meaning that all cases published therein are annotated with headnotes by West attorney-editors, and all those headnotes are then indexed in the West American Digest System (and its electronic version, KeyCite) for easy cross-referencing.
Technically, all of West's reporters were originally unofficial reporters published without the express authorization or endorsement of the courts. West reporters have become the nationwide de facto standard used by all federal courts and most state courts, despite their technically unofficial nature. Indeed, over 20 states have discontinued publication of their own official reporters, and a few states with West's cooperation began inserting certificates in the volumes of the relevant West regional reporter to certify it as their official reporter.
In 1995 West retained the services of A.G. Edwards and Goldman Sachs in a search for potential purchasers. Thomson purchased West in 1996. Thomson also consolidated into West a number of other law book companies purchased by either Thomson or West, including Bancroft-Whitney, Banks-Baldwin, Barclay, Callaghan & Company, Clark Boardman, Foundation Press, Gilbert's, Harrison, Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, and Warren, Gorham & Lamont. Today, West also publishes some treatise titles purchased from Shepard's (but not Shepard's Citations). Through these acquisitions, Thomson has become one of the "big three" legal publishers, along with LexisNexis and Wolters Kluwer. Following the acquisition by Thomson, West was known as WIPG, West Information Publishing Group. From 1997 to 2004, West was known as "West Group".
In 2009/2010 West began offering buyouts to its U.S. editorial staff as it began to move editorial production overseas.