Legal technology veteran Mark Bilson is joining Xperate as its chief commercial officer for North America, in a major hire for the UK-founded legal software development startup.
Bilson previously headed revenue operations at Nexl and before that he helped Persuit to set up in EMEA. However, he is probably best-known for helping set up APAC for Intapp, where he worked between 2012 and 2017, latterly holding the role of VP of client development. He was also a leading figure at LexisNexis InterAction, where in his last year he was regional manager for APAC.
Bilson officially starts at Xperate – co-founded by former Tikit heads Simon Hill and Mark Garnish – on 2 October. He will split his time between London and New York.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Bilson said: “What attracted me about Xperate primarily is Mark and Simon’s experience, and I really like them. In addition, what they do is provide bespoke development to meet the needs of clients. There are fantastic solutions out there but when it gets to integration, it’s a massive challenge.
“For law firms they often have legacy platforms that Xperate can integrate and move to a cloud environment, plus help to integrate with other cloud products.”
Xperate also outsource their growing development team, based in India, to legal technology providers.
Bilson says: “We already have clients in the US, and I will be hiring a team eventually. It’s a profitable business and things are growing quickly.
“Xperate can reduce legal tech vendors’ and law firm costs. The traditional players are big, outsourced development houses that work with Fortune 500 companies. Legal technology is special, and you need to work with people who understand the way law firms operate and can help them on a smaller scale to leverage outsourced development.”
caroline@legaltechnology.com