Login | May 30, 2025
Summit Legal Publishing finds a niche
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: October 25, 2012
When large law firms merge, one of the many effects of those mergers is the creation of small, boutique law firms that can be more focused on limited practice areas and can be more flexible in the smaller space that has opened up for them.
The same situation may be beginning to happen in legal publishing, with a case in point being the recent creation of Summit Legal Publishing in Akron (which can be found at www.summitlegalpublishing.com).
Started about a year ago by five former colleagues from the Cleveland office of the Thomson Reuters West publishing conglomerate, the new company does not see itself as a competitor to the West brand.
“We are not direct competitors to West or Lexis-Nexis,” said George Bandy, one of the company’s founders. The company, an LLC, terms all five of its principals “managing editors;” all five of them contribute in some way or another to each book.
The company founders, with their respective law schools, are: George Bandy (Akron); Amy L. Clark (Ohio State); Kenneth P. Hall (Akron); Lori Hlucky (Ohio State) and Kristie Tibbitts (Pepperdine).
Each of them brings particular talents to the table, garnered from their years of working in the legal publishing world.
Bandy said that large companies like West and Lexis want customers tied in to an “all-encompassing legal research platform.”
Summit, on the other hand, finds its niche in publishing smaller, practically-oriented reference books that lawyers can carry with them and use every day.
To keep costs low, the company uses “all open source and off-the-shelf software,” said Bandy. The company uses a printer capable of producing small runs, on-demand and personalized books.
And, he said, the painful learning curve of all of the “how to’s” of publishing books is now under control (until the next thing comes up).
The company’s first published books were quick-reference books on the Rules of Evidence for Indiana and Ohio.
Those books look a lot like an older series of evidence rules books, at the time spiral-bound, that were available in Ohio many years ago, said Bandy.
The company now has about 15 books in publication, with plans for more. These include quick reference evidence rules books for several states, a copy of the Federal Rules of Evidence, Bankruptcy rules and a two-volume complete set of Ohio Rules. Bandy said, the Ohio rules are divided into two volumes, Practice and Procedure and Government of Bench and Bar to accommodate how they are actually used by attorneys.
The Federal Rules of Evidence is the company’s bestseller, said Bandy. Summit’s edition may be the most up-to-date in both style and substance, especially since some of the changes in those rules just came down recently.
There are numerous differences between Summit’s published books and those of the mega-publishers. “Our publications,” said Bandy, “are more readable, faster, quicker and lighter.” And, for the most part, less expensive.
To begin with, Bandy explained, they are in much larger type, easier to read in when in a hurry in trial. They are also formatted in single-column, rather than the traditional double-column, format.
All of the company’s books are also available in all e-reader formats, as well as on Amazon.com
West, after trying for a couple of years to publish on Kindle, has apparently adopted, or is attempting to adopt, its own proprietary e-reader, according to Bandy. While some older volumes from West are available online, they have seemingly pulled back from using publicly-available e-readers.
The Summit publications are also available in .pdf format on the website, in a format that allows a user to use the margin notes function.
Each topic also gets its own book—so, for instance, instead of having to take an entire edition of court rules into court, a lawyer only takes in the Rules of Evidence—a much smaller book that, in the words of Bandy, is easier to fold up, pound on the table, and shake at people (besides being easier to read than micro-text).
Because the company is small and light on its feet, it can post updates to rules much more quickly than most publishers, said bandy. Those updates, as well as all rules changes back to 2009, are accessible from the company website.
The company is also currently the only publisher to have the federal rules available in iPad format (accessed through iTunes), Bandy said.
After a year in business, Bandy said that things were going well. Perhaps this is an Akron startup that will make good.