A History in Canada of Innovation and Growth
The Quicklaw® online legal research service began in the 1960s as the Queen’s University Investigation of Computing and Law (QUIC/LAW) project, financed by Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and IBM Canada Limited. When the project ended in 1973, two law school professors incorporated QL Systems Limited to offer commercially one of the world’s first online legal research services. Hugh Lawford and Richard von Briesen believed it possible, at reasonable prices, to provide lawyers in remote areas with the same high-quality research service offered to major law firms.
After Queen’s University assigned its rights in QUIC/LAW programs and databases to QL Systems Limited in 1973, the new company established headquarters in Kingston. QL Systems Limited continued to draw on the University’s academic and legal resources.
The company was renamed Quicklaw Inc. in 1999, and “Quicklaw” replaced “QUIC/LAW” as the name of the service. Quicklaw became Canada’s market-leading online legal research service, offering the most comprehensive collection available of primary and secondary legal resources.
Quicklaw Inc. was acquired by LexisNexis in 2002. Quicklaw was subsequently joined in a business unit with LexisNexis Butterworths Canada Ltd., and the two companies in the business unit were amalgamated at the beginning of 2003 to form LexisNexis Canada.
Butterworths was founded in 1818 as a law book publishing business based in London, England. In 1912, Butterworths Canada opened in Winnipeg with its sole function being the distribution of the parent English Butterworths company’s titles across North America. Later, when the English company acquired companies in the United States, those companies replaced Butterworths Canada as distributor in some U.S. areas. As a result, the Canadian Butterworths company enhanced its services by moving beyond the role of distributor of English titles to become a Canadian law publisher of serial publications, treatises and CD-ROMs.
Today Butterworths serves the legal, accountancy and allied professions by publishing authoritative and timely information in a variety of formats, including textbooks, journals, newsletters, looseleaf services, law reports, newspapers, magazines and CD-ROMs. All materials are expertly written and produced with the assistance of professionals working in a variety of specialist subject areas.