Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory

A database containing information about attorneys and law firms around the world.

Primarily lawyers use the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory to assist them in the practice of their profession. An attorney may use the directory, for example, to find out more information about a lawyer or law firm that has filed a lawsuit against her client or to find an attorney in another jurisdiction to assist in a case.

James B. Martindale published his first legal directory in 1868. In 1874 he published Martindale's United States Law Directory, a selective listing of attorneys that made no attempt to include complete information on all attorneys. The 1885–1886 biannual edition was renamed Martindale's American Law Directory. The first attempt to publish a complete roster of all attorneys in the United States and Canada, this edition listed each attorney and law firm in alphabetical order by state and city and the laws of each state and all Canadian provinces. In 1896 annual publication of the directory began, and a section listing foreign attorneys and law firms was added. The 1896 edition also introduced the basic information format for attorneys that continues to the present: date of birth, date of ADMISSION TO THE BAR, and a rating, if any, of legal ability.

In 1930 the Martindale Company purchased the publishing rights of Hubbell's Legal Directory issued by J. H. Hubbell & Company from 1870 to 1930. The company was purchased from Edwin Powell Hubble (a variant spelling of the family name), the astronomer for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named. The merged publications, renamed the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, appeared as a two-volume set in 1931.

The size of the directory has grown steadily as more attorneys have joined the profession. In 1948 the directory went to three volumes. By 1968 it had increased to five volumes. The first eight-volume set was published in 1987, and the 1991 edition was made up of sixteen smaller volumes. In 1996 the directory consisted of twenty-five volumes and contained listings for more than 900,000 attorneys and law firms in the United States, Canada, and throughout the world.

The directory is now available on CD-ROM, through LEXIS-NEXIS, and through the Martindale-Hubbell site on the World Wide Web. It has become a standard reference publication for law libraries. The Martindale Company was purchased by Reed Elsevier in 1990 and is part of Reed Reference Publishing.