Practical Law

What It Does

Practical Law is a legal know-how service: practice notes, standard document templates, checklists, and current-awareness updates written and maintained by a team of editorial lawyers. Rather than case law and statutes (Westlaw’s territory), it gives practitioners ready-made starting points — a template share purchase agreement, a step-by-step note on running a particular type of deal, a checklist for a regulatory filing. The pitch is time saved on routine drafting and getting up to speed in unfamiliar practice areas.

It is now a Thomson Reuters product and integrates tightly with Westlaw and Microsoft Word. Coverage is organised by jurisdiction (UK, US, and several others) and by practice area, so the content a corporate associate sees differs from what an employment or real estate lawyer pulls up.

What We Found

Practical Law was founded in London in 1990 by Chris Millerchip and Rob Dow, two former Slaughter and May lawyers, originally as a print publisher (PLC Magazine) for transactional lawyers. Thomson Reuters acquired the company — then Practical Law Company — in early 2013. At the time of acquisition it employed roughly 750 people, about 500 in the UK and 300 in the US.

Because it is now folded into Thomson Reuters, current standalone figures (headcount, dedicated follower counts) aren’t separately reported. It is widely used in both UK and US firms and in-house teams, and is frequently named alongside Lexis Practical Guidance as the main competitor in the legal know-how category.

What We Haven’t Verified

• Current employee count attributable to Practical Law specifically — it no longer reports separately from Thomson Reuters (pre-2013 figure was ~750)
• Pricing — bundled and quoted per organisation, not publicly listed
• Breadth and currency of templates across every jurisdiction and practice area