Copyright Compliance for Legal Sector: CLA Law Licence

Key Law Licence benefits

CLA’s Law Licence supports copyright risk management and compliance across law firms and barristers’ chambers in the UK, and globally through the Extended Multinational Law Licence.

Firms and chambers must secure the appropriate permissions before reusing third-party content. Failure to do so increases infringement risks, a particularly significant concern for those expected to uphold copyright law.

One blanket licence covers millions of titles
Supports firm wide compliance
Mitigates infringement risks
Enriches governance and CSR initiatives

Workplace generative AI permissions

Does your organisation use Generative AI tools?

As of May 2025 CLA has updated and extended Law Licence permissions to allow the lawful copying and inclusion of published content to prompt permitted generative AI tools to generate outputs (subject to the terms and conditions of the CLA licences).

Discover GAI permissions

Do you subscribe to a legal database?

Database limitations

If your office subscribes to legal databases or legal information management systems, a certain number of named employees will have access to their content. This access potentially includes some permissions to share the content internally, usually on a title-by-title basis, allowing for some limited distribution within the firm.

Gaps in permissions

Whilst highly valuable to the legal sector, your agreements with legal databases or information management systems are unlikely to provide enough support to cover all your permission requirements for print and digital publications. These resources, by nature, focus solely on law-related content, often leaving gaps in other necessary areas.

Sector-specific content

The kind of content used in sector-specific legal practices, such as specialist and trade publications, is not included. Content from SME publications might be acquired, read, and shared during a case or by groups involved in contracts or litigation in specific fields. These systems are also unlikely to cover all your staff for departmental and individual (digital and print) subscriptions coming into your offices, or additional content needed for internal training and research.

Law Licence benefits

The blanket CLA Law Licence, covering millions of titles, provides additional support for your firm. It is a cost-effective and practical way to ensure that staff, publications, and copying and sharing activities not included under these databases’ arrangements are covered. This comprehensive coverage protects you from the risk of copyright infringement and supports your firm’s diverse needs.

The CLA Law Licence is specifically created for the legal sector

The CLA Law Licence simplifies legal sector copyright compliance for law firms and barristers’ chambers. Copy and share excerpts from various sources (subject to certain terms and conditions) including:

Printed & digital publications (books, journals, magazines)
Your existing subscriptions
Licensed external suppliers (press cuttings agencies, British Library)

Note: Copyright fees may apply for external supplier materials.

It contains permissions that aren’t included in other licences. In addition to the permissions found in the standard CLA Business Licence, the Law Licence add-on has tailored features to support lawyers, barristers and the legal sector directly, helping protect your firm’s reputation. An Extended Multinational Law Licence is also available, simplifying licensing for global firms and improving efficiencies in licence costs and document sharing. Delve into the specifics of the licence permissions in our CLA Law Licence FAQs Q&A article.

Share copies on an ad-hoc basis with clients and other legal professionals in relation to an ongoing case

Share copies with existing or prospective customers on matters for which they may seek legal advice in the future* _{*(excludes CCC repertoire)}

Share a single digital or hard copies with colleagues in offices overseas (employees in the same firm)

Retain digitised copies beyond termination of the licence and for as long as required to retain records of actual and contemplated legal proceedings

The Generative AI Era

Embracing Innovation and Good Governance

As seen in The Law Society and Gazette

Serena Dederding, General Counsel and Company Secretary at CLA, explores how UK law firms can adopt generative AI to enhance productivity while managing associated copyright risks.

Read article

Copyright and ESG

Ethical Imperatives for Compliance and Responsibility

As seen in The Law Society and New Law Journal

Colin Hulme, Head of Intellectual Property (IP) at Burness Paull LLP, considers the impact of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) programmes on the observance of copyright by corporates.

Read article

Start your Law Licence enquiry

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Navigating your Law Licence

Ossie Ikeogu, Head of Sales and Renewals, answers essential FAQs on the CLA Law Licence and Extended Multinational Law Licence

Content use and copying practices

Study by CLA on content use behaviours and copying practices amongst UK professionals, with a spotlight on the legal sector

Helping law firms stay legal

Discover how CLA helps the legal sector keep on the right side of copyright law, with the CLA Law Licence

CLA is regulated by the UK government as the collective licensing body for the reuse of text and images from books, journals and magazines.
As a not-for-profit company, CLA distributes revenue back into the creative industries helping to ensure that rightsholders are fairly remunerated when their works are used.

Top 50 legal titles copied

Discover the most copied titles by the legal sector from the CLA repertoire.

Copyright & ESG

Ethical Imperatives for Compliance and Responsibility. Featured article by IP specialist, Colin Hulme

Supporting Barristers' Chambers

Discover more about how the CLA Licence supports barristers chambers

Barristers’ Chambers

Law Licence FAQs

Find out more about CLA's Law Licence

What does the CLA Law Licence let me do?

The licence gives professional employees at law firms and barristers' chambers the right to re-use extracts from millions of published digital and print publications, including articles supplied by media monitoring agencies. It provides protection against the risk of copyright infringement and includes an indemnity against legal action and the associated costs. The licence offers a simple solution to copyright compliance so you can research and collaborate with peace of mind. Permissions within the licence specifically tailored for the legal sector include;

Share copies on an ad-hoc basis with clients and other legal professionals in relation to an ongoing case
Share copies with existing or prospective customers on matters for which they may seek legal advice in the future (excludes CCC repertoire)
Share a single digital or hard copies with colleagues in offices overseas (employees in the same firm)
Retain digitised copies beyond termination of the licence and for as long as required to retain records of actual and contemplated legal proceedings

Does the CLA Law Licence include Workplace Generative AI Permissions?

The CLA Law Licence permissions permit the lawful copying and inclusion of published content to prompt permitted generative AI tools to generate outputs (subject to licence terms). With these new permissions, outputs from these prompts can be used for internal purposes such as presentations, meetings and briefings, staff training, internal comms and reporting, as well as some permitted external use. Learn more about these permissions here

What is the Extended Multinational Law Licence?

An Extended Multinational Law Licence is also available, simplifying licensing for global firms and improving efficiencies in licence costs and document sharing. The fee metric is slightly different to the standard Law Licence from CLA. The UK remains exactly the same under the Multinational Licence. For offices outside the UK, fees are based on an FTE (full-time equivalent employee) basis, so it draws in a headcount figure for your operations outside of the UK. Thanks to the relationship CLA has with CCC, our respective multinational licences include each other’s rights. So, where your firm has a CCC licence in the USA, it is possible to include those rights under a licence with CLA.

I have an NLA licence, do I need a CLA licence as well?

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and NLA Media Access (NLA) are separate licensing bodies that represent separate publication repertoires. Organisations making copies from a variety of media will invariably find they will benefit from holding both licences. NLA media access provides cover for newspapers, some magazines, and websites. The CLA licence covers millions of publications including books, journals, trade magazines, periodicals, law reports, and many digital publications and online content including ‘free-to-view’ websites. There is no overlap between CLA and NLA repertoire, the licences complement one another. The differences between CLA and NLA licences coverage is explored here.

We already pay a fee to our media monitoring agency; do we still need a CLA licence?

Your Media Monitoring Agency is covered under their CLA licence to send clippings to you, their clients. Under their licence, one person can receive a clipping, view it once, and print and retain a hard copy. If you wish to have multiple user access or make multiple copies of media clippings this will require your business to hold your own CLA licence. A licence is required if electronic/web clippings are accessed more than once, or by more than one employee, or if additional copies are made, forwarded, or digitally stored from clippings received electronically or in hard copy.

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