What is the definition of Practical Law? Practical Law is a legal information service that is available online. It includes peer-reviewed resources such as practise notes, current knowledge, and standard documents to help you work more efficiently and confidently.

Our increasing staff of experienced editors, who have worked in some of the world's most prestigious law firms, corporations, and government agencies, generate and maintain resources. Practical Law will assist you whether you are diversifying your practise and need an accessible, authoritative overview of a new area of law or simply want expertly-authored updates on your current specialisation.

What exactly is legal know-how? We believe that legal know-how is a collection of practical resources that will assist you in performing your job more efficiently. It gives you a time advantage while also equipping you with the tools to work faster and smarter.

Practical Law, a division of West Publishing Corporation, is a legal publishing company that provides business lawyers with legal knowledge. It also serves as the secretariat for the GC100 group of general counsel and corporate secretaries.

Chris Millerchip and Rob Dow founded the company in the early 1990s to publish PLC Magazine. Since then, it has grown to primarily provide web-based subscription services to law firms and law departments in a variety of specialist subject areas such as corporate, finance, property, tax, and intellectual property. Practical Law, founded in 1990 by two former Slaughter and May lawyers, began as a print venture aimed at transactional lawyers in the United Kingdom.

The first publications of the company detailed the legal requirements for specific types of transactions—highly structured leveraged buyouts and the like—and discussed why certain structures are used for certain types of deals. "We created what we wanted when we were practising," says Chris Millerchip, cofounder and chairman of Practical Law.

After ten years, the company created a suite of Web-based tools to help transactional lawyers work more efficiently.  Practical Law developed and continues to update practise notes, document templates, standard clauses, deal checklists, and tools to teach junior associates the fundamentals of dealmaking."

Practical Law employs approximately 500 people in the United Kingdom, with headquarters in London, and 300 in the United States, with headquarters in New York.