[7] 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.

[14] After Mead asked for a practicing lawyer on the team, Jerome Rubin, a Harvard-trained attorney with 20 years of experience was included.

[15] At the time, OBAR searches often took up to five hours to complete if more than one user was online, and its original terminals were noisy Teletypes with slow transmission rates of 10 characters per second.

[15] After Wilson was put in charge, he became reluctant to implement his own study's recommendation to abandon the OBAR/Data Central work to date and start over.

[18] 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.

[15] Under a newly organized division, Mead Technical Laboratories, Data Central continued to operate as a service bureau for nonlegal applications until 1980.

[19] Rubin then hired a new team to build an entirely new information service dedicated exclusively to legal research.

[18] After several iterations, the original functional and performance specifications were finalized by Rubin and executive vice president Bob Bennett in late summer 1972.

[17] At the same time, Rubin and Bennett orchestrated the necessary keyboarding of the legal materials to be provided through LEXIS,[20] and designed a business plan, marketing strategy, and training program.

"[8] To persuade American lawyers to use LEXIS (at a time when computer literacy was rare), MDC used aggressive marketing, sales, and training campaigns.

In September 1981, Rubin and several of his allies (including Bennett and Gottsman) left Mead Data Central to pursue other opportunities.

[26] Today, the two companies have an amicable business relationship, and in 2002 implemented a joint promotion called "Win a Lexus on Lexis!"

[38] In 2004, Reed Elsevier Group, parent company of LexisNexis, purchased Seisint, Inc, from founder Michael Brauser[39] of Boca Raton, Florida.

In February 2008, Reed Elsevier purchased data aggregator ChoicePoint (previous NYSE ticker symbol CPS) in a cash deal for US$3.6 billion.

[41] In 2013, LexisNexis, together with Reed Elsevier Properties SA, acquired publishing brands and businesses of Sheshunoff and A.S. Pratt from Thompson Media Group.

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

[52] 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.

[55] 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,[56] which provides news and blogs across a variety of legal areas.

After leaving Coventry he was apprenticed to and, for some time, worked for 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.

"[69] 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).

NOYB alleges that LexisNexis collects personal data of European citizens through its legal research products and services, including Lexis Advance and LexisNexis® Academic.

NOYB also alleges that LexisNexis does not provide European citizens with an opportunity to opt out of the collection and storage of their personal data.

If the DPC finds that LexisNexis has violated the GDPR, it could impose a fine of up to €20 million or 4% of the company's global annual turnover, whichever is greater.

[72] 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 2022, the company was sued by a group of privacy advocates[specify] who alleged that it was illegally using facial recognition technology to scan images of people without their consent.

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.

[citation needed] The report also found that LexisNexis was sharing this data with third-party companies without the knowledge or consent of the individuals involved.