Not quite sure if this is something for your Christmas reading list but Sweet & Maxwell has launched the latest edition of the best-selling Chitty on Contracts in its new fully interactive ebook format. Chitty has been published since 1826 and covers all areas of contract law. Reviewers have described Chitty as the “most important book of the common law library”.
Sweet & Maxwell, a Thomson Reuters business, says the launch of the ebook version of Chitty marks a major step forward in the publication’s history, and underlines the company’s commitment to its ebook programme. Chitty is the latest addition to a number of titles offered by Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell in ebook format, and comes hot on the heels of ebook versions of Archbold for criminal lawyers and The White Book for civil procedure rules.
Chitty uses Thomson Reuters ereader platform ProView which was launched last year. Thomson Reuters ProView is specifically built for lawyers and accountants and offers the most advanced functionality of any professional services book. Thomson Reuters Sweet & Maxwell will launch future editions of key titles in both print and digital format and says it will increase the number of eBooks it makes available on ProView to 30 by the end of the year.
“It’s clear to us that the way solicitors and barristers work is changing, and whether they are drafting contracts or preparing for cases, the legal profession is increasingly asking us to provide detailed background material in a format that is accessible from any location,” said Chris Hendry, head of advanced media, Thomson Reuters at Sweet & Maxwell.
“Chitty is just the kind of market-leading reference product that legal practitioners want to see in eBook format,” said Hendry. “We are expecting the trend towards the use of tablet technology to access legal information to keep rising, and are confident our ebooks are well ahead of other products in the legal market.”
Sweet & Maxwell say until the advent of interactive ereader platforms such as ProView, digital legal books were little more than clunky PDF documents that were clumsy to navigate and offered users few of their potential benefits. The Chitty ebook offers the best features of digital media, enabling lawyers to make their own notes, search quickly and easily to find what they need, highlight critical text, and can also be emailed to colleagues or clients with one simple touch.