It’s been a year of significant growth for Houston-headquartered legal consulting and solutions startup Morae Legal, which has now hired former Huron Consulting Group (HCG) managing director Robert Haskin as its MD and Mori Kabiri from Kiersted Systems as senior director.
Haskin has spent the last 14 years helping corporate legal and IT departments improve their discovery management functions by designing and implementing innovative solutions, including advanced data analytics. In May 2002 he joined HCG, working within Huron Legal, which was acquired by Consilio in January this year.
Haskin’s arrival at Morae Legal, which was launched in September 2015 and works with corporate counsel to improve their strategy and business processes, coincides with the launch last month of its information and discovery management service.
Haskin is joined by Mori Kabiri, previously director of professional services at Kiersted, who has been working with Fortune 500 law departments for over 15 years. Before Kiersted, Kabiri was as a senior project manager for 20th Century Fox.
These two latest hires follow the announcement in March that Morae Legal, which is led by president Shahzad Bashir, himself ex-executive vice president of HCG, had hired ten senior legal and consulting executives.
One of those hires was Jeff Seymour, a former principal at Deloitte, working in transactions and business analytics, who heads Morae’s new information and discovery management service.
Speaking of Haskin’s arrival, Seymour said: “We are committed to helping our clients leverage technology, process and data analytics to build more effective, next-generation information governance and discovery programs. Bob’s proficiency with applicable technologies will increase our speed to market. Bob also brings deep domain experience in the energy sector to bear, having worked with energy companies throughout his career.”
Earlier in April, Morae announced that it has launched ELEXIR, described as a technology-enabled extension of a law department, which enables GCs to staff up for short-term projects, cover long-term leave and outsource specific functions, international assignments or more.
That announcement followed an agreement with Rockwater Energy Solutions in January, under which Morae Legal will provide outsourced legal services to the company and act as an extension of Rockwater’s law department.
Perhaps all of the above makes a bit more sense when you know that Morae Legal, which has offices in Chicago, New York and Washington D.C., is backed by a group of investors which includes Dick Kiphart, a well-known Chicago angel investor and co-founder of KGC Capital. The group is led by Garland Capital Group’s founder and CEO Gary Holdren, who is a founder of Morae Legal and its chairman.