Canadian Legal Publishers Start Offering iPad Content

Gary P. Rodrigues comments today on slaw.ca about the arrival of the first iPad-ready content offerings from two Canadian legal publishers, Wilson & Lafleur and LexisNexis.

These first products are in French:

"Offering a handful of French language titles first is seen by some as a low risk test of market acceptance. No major revenue sources have as yet been put in play by the titles that have thus far been offered for sale but that will quickly change as the major English language legal publishers act to ensure that they do not lose market share in the event that the ipad catches proves to be a game changer. A key battleground will be in the market for annotated criminal codes and rules of civil procedure. The publisher first to market may gain a competitive edge."

More interestingly, Rodrigues speculates about the impact a wide adoption of the iPad in the legal community could have:

"The ipad may also help re-establish the pre-eminent position of the legal treatise as the starting point in legal research, freeing the mind of the user from the distraction of unlimited access to case law and legislation, which some believe impedes the quality of legal research. The use of a treatise permits the researcher to focus on the legal problem at hand."