Connect with a Practical Law Editor: Anna Pohl, Senior Legal Editor, Labor & Employment | Legal Solutions | Thomson Reuters
Legal Solutions | USA
The Modern Practice

HOW PRACTICAL LAW RESOURCES ARE CREATED

Our thorough, painstaking editorial process ensures you’re getting the most complete, up-to-date resources. Here’s how:

Practical Law Attorney Editors follow a rigorous peer review and maintenance process to ensure that the expert how-to guidance presented in Practical Law and Practical Law Connect is accurate, current and actionable. They maintain well-established relationships with legislative and agency staff and leverage technology to quickly identify changes in law, regulation or process and rapidly publish new guidance or update existing resources.

It takes a large team of seasoned experts and a lot of time, effort and consideration to supply the legal industry’s most trusted answers. As it should. In addition to creating thousands of new checklists, practice notes, templates, budget tools and other resources each year, our attorney editors spend 30% of their time (or about 12,000 hours each month) maintaining the accuracy of existing materials.

When your reputation and legal outcomes are at stake, can you afford to settle for any less?

Examine each stage of the editorial process to learn more:

Consistent
Monitoring

Topic
Selection

Research
& Drafting

Peer
Review

Final Review

X

Consistent Monitoring

As an additional quality control measure, all maintained resources are reviewed and updated regularly to reflect changes in the law or practice since the prior review.

X

Topic Selection

  • Customer requests
  • Advisory Board
  • Newly published resources
  • Legal updates
  • News sources

If necessary, editors will work with a resource contributor.

X

Research & Drafting

Once the topic is confirmed, the editor will spend hours reviewing and analyzing primary and secondary sources to build on their own expertise. The editor ensures that the first draft:

  • Speaks to all major practical considerations
  • Addresses related questions
  • Is formatted in Practical Law easy-to-read format

X

Peer Review

Each resource is reviewed by editors inside the practice area and in related areas of law. The editors provide substantive, thorough feedback. The lead editor for the resource will then:

  • Tighten the language
  • Add links to related content
  • Produce a second draft

X

Final Review

A team of J.D.s proofread everything to ensure:

  • Consistency with the strict Practical Law editorial standards
  • Uniform prose

Only then is the resource allowed to be published on Practical Law.

Please continue reading if you would like to learn more about the exceptional attorney editors behind the process or visit our main site to learn more about the solutions Practical Law can offer law firms, corporate legal departments, government entities and law schools.

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