LOD, or “Lawyers on Demand”, has acquired Australasian legal services business lexvoco.
Launched in 2014, lexvoco supports in-house counsel through the delivery of innovative legal operations and legaltech solutions as well as providing law firm services.
“lexvoco is an important force in the Australian market and we have always admired the way they have pushed the legaltech and legal ops consulting business harder than we have,” LOD chief executive Tom Hartley told Legal IT Insider.
“They do what we do now and what we want to do in the future,” he added. “In addition to legaltech, they have a big secondment business which is at the heart of what we are doing in that market. So, they give us scale in our core business and a leg up in an area where we are looking to grow.”
LOD will have the lexvoco teams join them in their combined offices of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth whilst adding Adelaide, Geelong, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to the LOD network.
In APAC, the legal operations and legal technology function of lexvoco will form a new offering called LOD Innovate, which will be headed up by lexvoco founder and CEO Anthony Wright. There are no current plans to replicate this model in the UK.
LOD’s acquisition of lexvoco was supported by private equity firm Bowmark Capital, which acquired a majority stake in the business last year.
“Having private equity behind us gave us real confidence going into these conversations because the PE guys have the process and the money to see it through to completion,” said Hartley. “They also provide real rigour in an acquisition. Management may identify liking a team, or what a company stands for in the market. But, actually going through the process of executing a deal like this with private equity was quite an experience.”
LOD, originally a UK business created by Berwin Leighton Paisner, merged with AdventBalance in Asia and Australia in 2016, giving the flexible legal services company global scale.
While, there are no further acquisitions expected imminently, Hartley said that additional M&A was definitely part of the company’s strategy.
“We would like to continue to grow scale in markets where we already are, so we are always looking for like-minded similar business,” he explained. “The move into legal engineering and technology is critical so we are looking to enhance what we have there. We have also always looked at the US and thought that is an area where we would like to expand. So, while there is nothing immediately on the cards, M&A is definitely a part of our future.”
By Amy Carroll