Amid the International Legal Tech Association (ILTA) conference that took place Aug. 21-25 in Maryland, a variety of companies issued press releases about new developments.
Some legal tech companies touted product upgrades, while others highlighted new partnerships and acquisitions. Contracts, ediscovery and analytics were among the areas where news was made.
Here’s a rundown of some of the legal tech companies who made news this past week:
LexFusion
The collective of legal innovation companies announced its selection of DISCO, an AI-powered legal solution, as its ediscovery partner.
The two companies said their collaboration will help accelerate digital transformation for corporations and law firms.
“While our search convinced us there are many attention-worthy innovations upending the ediscovery status quo, DISCO offered the most fully realized value proposition and the most compelling vision for what comes next,” said Joe Borstein, LexFusion’s CEO.
“We are honored to partner with LexFusion and, together, help guide legal professionals on their journey to incorporate technology to drive better outcomes,” said Andrew Shimek, DISCO’s chief revenue officer.
Casepoint
The cloud-based ediscovery and legal hold technology platform announced new features to assist legal teams in multi-matter management.
Cross Matter Search is a feature the company said reduces the time and complexity of searching multiple matters to find relevant data, while Workspace-to-Workspace Data Transfer enables attorneys to reuse sets of documents across multiple matters.
"Many organizations, most notably consumer product and public utilities companies, are engaged in a constant stream of litigation that is substantially similar, and their attorneys are constantly conducting searches and transferring data across different matters,” said Vishal Rajpara, Casepoint’s founder and chief technology officer. “This is time-consuming and costly, especially given the huge volumes of data involved in these cases. By adding these new features to the Casepoint platform we are providing major improvements to the management of multiple matters simultaneously."
LegalEase Solutions
The alternative legal services provider announced it has acquired contract lifecycle management consulting firm CLM Gurus, along with key executives and staff.
The acquisition will support LegalEase’s end-to-end CLM implementation offerings, the company said.
Additionally, CLM Gurus co-founder and CEO Jim O’Hare will serve as LegalEase’s vice president, CLM services, and Rita Zandbergs and Spencer Essey both join as directors.
“With Jim O’Hare and his team joining LegalEase, we have added some of the best CLM talent out there to bolster every aspect of our services for enterprise clients,” said LegalEase CEO and co-founder Tariq Akbar. “It has also significantly enhanced our onshore U.S. delivery team, complementing our substantial offshore delivery capability.”
QuisLex
The alternative legal services provider announced a strategic partnership with eBrevia by DFIN, a provider of AI-powered contract analytics software.
The collaboration is designed to provide seamless CLM migration, an exercise that can often be onerous and time-consuming.
“The combination of eBrevia’s suite of APIs with QuisLex’s process, workflow and skilled legal personnel allows for a custom approach to handle the large amount of data processing and management involved in migrating to a new CLM,” says QuisLex director of sales operations and partnerships David Cochran.
BigHand
The provider of operational and financial products for law firms announced it has acquired Digitory Legal, a cost analytics platform designed to help in-house legal departments and law firms better leverage their timecard data.
Digitory also provides data about whether diverse lawyers are doing work on important legal matters, something legal departments want to see occurring at their outside law firms.
The two companies have been partners previously, and Digitory CEO and Founder Catherine Krow and her team will join BigHand.
“Together we can now help law firms take strides forward with their DEI agendas and make impactful change within the legal sector, which is very exciting and frankly, overdue,” Krow said.
