LexisNexis Group is a corporation providing computer-assisted legal research as well as business research and risk management services. During the 1970s, LexisNexis pioneered the electronic accessibility of legal and journalistic documents. As of 2006, the company has the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information.

History

Currently a division of RELX Group (formerly Reed Elsevier), LexisNexis was first a product of the Mead Data Central company.

The Anglo-Dutch publishing company Reed Elsevier has owned LexisNexis and its predecessor company since 1994. At its inception in 1970, the database was named LEXIS by Mead Data Central (MDC), a subsidiary of the Mead Corporation. It was a continuation of an experiment organized by the Ohio State Bar in 1967.

On April 2, 1973, LEXIS launched publicly, offering full-text search in all Ohio and New York cases. In 1980, LEXIS completed its hand-keyed electronic archive of all U.S. federal and state cases. The NEXIS service, added that same year, gave journalists a searchable database of news articles. LexisNexis' world headquarters is located in Dayton, Ohio, United States. In 1989, MDC acquired the Michie Company, a legal publisher, from Macmillan.