Hats off to Sarah Glassmeyer for graphing out the shrinking legal publisher market in a way that really shows how much consolidation has been going on over the past 30+ years (see the full graph).  Glassmeyer lists out the three big publishers (Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwer) and show how much of the market that these big players have gobbled up.

The list is primarily showing the actual print publishers like Banks-Baldwin (which was shut down by Thomson Reuters last week.)  I thought I’d have a little fun and add in some of the other legal products that have also been gobbled up. It was a heck of a project, so I just did the Thomson Reuters mergers and put it out on a Google Docs page so that anyone can copy and paste it into their own spreadsheets if they want.  [note: you’ll need to do some re-formatting when you put it into your own spreadsheet.]

I’m sure that I missed many of the mergers that have taken place, but it gives you a visual on how much the market is shrinking under a few umbrellas. On the other hand, there are still a lot of upstarts out there that are entering the market all the time, so maybe that will help balance things out in the end.
I hope that someone (or a crowd of people… hint, hint) will take the time to make a Reed Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer spreadsheet and share it with the rest of us.