FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          AT
MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1997                             (202) 616-2771
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND SEVEN STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL APPROVE SALE
 OF THOMSON CORP. LEGAL PUBLISHING PRODUCTS TO REED-ELSEVIER INC.

     WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Justice and seven state
attorneys general today announced their approval of Thomson Corp.'s
sale of 52 legal publishing products to Reed-Elsevier Inc., the
parent company of Lexis-Nexis and Michie Publishing.
  
     The Department said that divestiture of the products was
required to settle a joint antitrust challenge of the merger of West
Publishing Co. and Thomson Corp. by the Department's Antitrust
Division and state attorneys general from California, Connecticut,
Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin.   The
settlement was approved on March 7, 1997, by the U.S. District Court
in Washington, D.C.

     "Reed-Elsevier's legal publishing infrastructure and its overall
position in the industry should insure that the divested products
remain viable and competitive with their counterpart products at
Thomson, to the benefit of consumers of legal research," said Joel I.
Klein, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
Department's Antitrust Division. 
 
     Thomson is also required under the settlement to:

     * Divest its official case reporters in California, Washington,
and Wisconsin, if the relevant state governing body chooses another
official publisher.

     * Grant licenses to use West's internal pagination for a nominal
fee, which begins in 2001, for firms with annual revenues less than
$25 million, and only if there is no final invalidation of West's
claimed pagination copyright.

     * Extend licenses for three non-legal databases to Reed-Elsevier
for five years.

     The divestiture includes popular legal research products such as
Auto-Cite; U.S. Code Service; Supreme Court Reporter, Lawyer's
Edition; Deering's California Code Annotated; Annotated Laws of
Massachusetts; and the New York Consolidated Laws Service.  
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