Our History
BLR® was founded in 1977 by Robert L. Brady with a mission to provide executives and decision makers with reliable, easy-to-understand analysis of the ever-increasing and complex state and federal laws.
Key Milestones
1978 — Launched our first newsletter, Personnel Manager’s Legal Reporter. The Personnel Manager’s Legal Reporter became the leading tool for non-lawyers to understand employment legal issues in plain, easy-to-understand English. It was also the foundation for a line of newsletters that are still popular and winning awards today, including:
1984 — We introduced our line of state-based looseleaf books – beginning with What to do About Personnel Problems in New York State. These award-winning products have become the de facto standard for providing detailed, state-based, actionable information to HR, compliance, safety, and environmental practitioners worldwide. These include:
1985 — To serve customers who needed quality, value-priced stand-alone training and support materials, we developed our first booklet, Understanding the Hazard Communication Standard. Today our popular booklet line has more than 185 titles in both English and Spanish.
1997 — Our award-winning line of training solutions started in 1997 with our still-popular, 7-Minute Safety Trainer. This line has expanded to live audio conferences/webinars, videos, DVDs, and PowerPoints and today includes titles such as:
1998 — BLR launched its Web-based business in 1998. First launching our online catalog and then each of our award-winning compliance portals.
2000 — We decided to launch a website that was both fun and informative—the HR Challenge. That was so popular we launched a few more. These have grown into award-winning and industry-leading resources that professionals depend on each and every day. Today these websites include:
2001 — We acquired the Employer Resource Institute® (ERI). Today, ERI is the leading provider of award-winning compliance information for California employers.
2004 — As our customers moved online, so did BLR, launching a line of on-demand applications starting with the BLR Job Description Manager. All of our Web-based applications are available standalone or bundled in as a value-add components in each our compliance portals. Current on-demand applications include:
2007 – Custom Solution Services launched, providing customized versions of BLR solutions for large organizations worldwide. Our Custom Solutions Services team now supports some of the leading companies in their respective industries. For example, today we serve 3 of the top 5 insurance brokerages in the United States.
2007 — We launched our annual HR event, the National Employment Law Update. This has now become a leading conference for HR professionals to understand how changing employment laws impact their organizations.
2008 — Bringing our industry-leading compliance training solutions online, we launched the BLR Employee Training Center. Voted Best Workforce Training Solution in the 2009 SIIA CODiE Awards, this turnkey training platform is training employees worldwide, 24/7.
2009 — We changed our name from Business & Legal Reports to Business & Legal Resources to better reflect the compliance portals, online applications, and websites that are the core part of our business. Note our name is still our founder’s initials … backwards! Many people still know us, and always have known us, simply as “BLR.”