A sense of community, the opportunity to drive productivity and a huge new wave of tech solutions, make legaltech an exciting space for private equity investors, Hector Guinness of HgCapital, which has investments in Mitratech and German legaltech company STP, told a packed room of CIOs and innovation heads at the Legal Leaders IT Forum in Gleneagles, in his after dinner speech.
“If you got the CIOs of the big retailers together in a room, they wouldn’t talk, they hate each other,” he said.
“In the legal industry, you are both competitors and peers. You respect each other. There is a sense of community. That means if a supplier does a good job, people will get to hear about it. If they do a bad job, they get to hear about that too. But as an investor, that’s an exciting opportunity.”
Guinness added, to cries of “hear hear”, that the opportunity to improve productivity in law firms is almost limitless.
“There is this huge wave of legal technology to drive that productivity. And it is great to see law firms increasingly embracing that. As investors, that makes legal tech a great place to be.”
By Amy Carroll