LexisNexis is not a journal publisher in the usual sense - it is the world's dominant legal-research database and a major legal publisher of books, encyclopedias, and practitioner journals. If you are a law student, legal scholar, or practitioner, you will use LexisNexis mainly to find law - cases, statutes, regulations, secondary sources, and news - rather than to submit research articles. This guide explains what LexisNexis actually is, how access works, how to cite what you find there, and the routes that do exist for publishing with LexisNexis.

The company's lineage is long: the Butterworths legal-publishing house was founded in London in 1818, while the database side began with Mead Data Central (formed around 1970), which launched LEXIS - the first widely used full-text legal research service - in 1973 and the NEXIS news service later that decade. Reed Elsevier acquired the business in 1994 for $1.5 billion; today LexisNexis is a division of RELX plc, making it a sister company to Elsevier.

LexisNexis states that its global legal and news database holds 200+ billion documents and records, with millions of new documents added daily. The main content pillars:

Because LexisNexis is a subscription database, the usual journal-publisher questions mostly do not apply. There are no article processing charges (APCs), no open-access routes, no transformative agreements, and no journal submission portal for research articles. Law reviews indexed in LexisNexis are published by law schools and other publishers - LexisNexis licenses and distributes them. If your goal is to publish legal scholarship, you submit to a law review or a law journal directly (often via Scholastica in the US), not to LexisNexis.

• Law firms and corporations subscribe to Lexis+ (US) or Lexis Library (UK and Commonwealth markets), typically under negotiated per-seat contracts. Pricing is quote-based and not published.
• Law schools almost universally provide free access for enrolled students and faculty; most academic law libraries also carry Nexis Uni for the wider university.
• Individuals can buy limited pay-as-you-go access to specific documents, but casual public access is minimal.

Since 2020 the flagship US platform has been Lexis+, and LexisNexis has moved aggressively into legal AI: Lexis+ AI launched in 2023, the Protégé legal AI assistant became generally available in January 2025, and in February 2026 the company launched Lexis+ with Protégé, an integrated AI-workflow platform replacing Lexis+ AI in the US.

Cite the underlying authority, not the database, whenever a print or neutral citation exists.

• Bluebook (US): unreported cases retrieved from Lexis use the LEXIS database identifier, e.g. Smith v. Jones, No. 21-1234, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45678 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 3, 2025).
• OSCOLA (UK): cite the case by its neutral citation or law report; only mention Lexis Library if the source is available nowhere else.
• SciSpace's citation generator supports both Bluebook and OSCOLA if you need formatted references quickly.

Realistic routes for authors:

1. Books and treatises - LexisNexis (including Butterworths in the UK) actively commissions practitioner texts, annotated statutes, and looseleaf services. Proposals go to the relevant commissioning editor.
2. Practitioner journals - titles such as the New Law Journal (UK weekly, est. 1965) and The Banking Law Journal (US, est. 1889, an A.S. Pratt publication) accept short practice-focused articles from lawyers and academics. These use editorial review rather than academic double-blind peer review, and decisions typically take weeks, not months.
3. Contributing to Halsbury's Laws of England - the authoritative encyclopedia of English law is written by or in consultation with subject experts, by invitation.

LexisNexis is a legitimate, top-tier legal information provider with no predatory-publishing concerns - the standard caveat is cost and vendor lock-in, not quality. Its main competitor is Westlaw (Thomson Reuters); most large law firms subscribe to one or both. As with any database, check that a case is still good law using the built-in Shepard's citator before relying on it.