Question Time for Thomson Reuters and PLC's Top Team
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Robin Neidorf meets up with key members of Thomson Reuters and PLC's senior management team to quiz them about the role of PLC in Thomson Reuters' plans for the US legal market - and to find out more about Thomson Reuters' approach to the legal market worldwide.

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Not far from where I live and work is the Thomson Reuters campus in Eagan, Minnesota. Whenever I visit the site, I have the refreshing experience of speaking directly, face-to-face, with the leaders who are directing and shaping the global legal business through an increasingly comprehensive suite of products and services.

A recent high-profile acquisition is Practical Law Company (PLC), announced in January. The sale of PLC’s US business to Thomson Reuters received regulatory approval in February, and the UK approval came in March. With those hurdles cleared, Thomson Reuters is moving full steam ahead on integrating PLC with its offerings, as well as learning from the success of its editorial and business model.

During the years I’ve researched the information industry, I’ve never found it easy to cover Thomson Reuters and its businesses. It seems that as soon as I’ve developed a good relationship, my contact moves to a different area of the business, the asset moves elsewhere in the business, or the product is folded into another project or sold off altogether. Analysing Thomson Reuters could be a full-time job.

Business Planning in a Dynamic & Complex Environment

Which is why the face-to-face meeting can be both refreshing and incredibly educational: there’s nothing quite like sitting across the table with the people who are directly responsible for moving forward with business planning in an incredibly dynamic – and large and complex – environment. They can clarify, direct my questions towards the real meat of the story, and affirm that, yes, it can be difficult to track the changes at an entity of this size.

I doubt there could be a better gathering of people to answer questions about the role of PLC in Thomson Reuters’s plans for the US legal market than these:

• Chris Maguire, global head of Strategy & Business Development, Legal
• Allison Guidette, managing director, Large Law Firms
• Eric Laughlin, managing director, Corporate Counsel Segment
• Chris Wedgeworth, managing director, Practical Law
• Ian Nelson, senior director, Strategic Marketing, Practical Law.

We met in late April to speak primarily about US strategy, as the earlier approval of that acquisition meant the process of strategic planning was further along. But much of our discussion touched on global issues, and on Thomson Reuters’ fundamental approaches to the legal market.

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