AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers

Did you know that AALL through CRIV provides the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers?

You can find this guide on the list of CRIV Tools on the AALL Website.

The guide was first published in November 2002 and has been updated a few times since then. The latest update was 2018. The Federal Trade Commission encouraged AALL to take over providing guidance to Legal Publishers, after rescinding their publication, Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Law Book Industry.

The Guide provides Five Principles for Legal Publishers to follow:

• Principle 1: Truthful and Accurate Communication
• Principle 2: Disclosure
• Principle 3: Fair Dealing
• Principle 4: Customer Satisfaction
• Principle 5: Product Quality

Each of the Five Principles is expanded on in the guide with Sub-Principles, Comments and examples. For example, Principle 1 introduces the sub-principle Truthful Advertising. There is a comment stating that a legal publisher should be able to substantiate any claim in their marketing. Then there is a Practice to Avoid, which give the example of stating that a product has been thoroughly tested, when beta testing has not been completed.

Up next week — Principles & Practices for Licensing E-Resources!