US-founded pro bono community platform Paladin has acquired leading reporting tool Pro Bono Manager from rival-turned-partner Pro Bono Net, with Pro Bono Net’s co-founder and executive director Mark O’Brien joining Paladin as an advisor.
Pro Bono Manager is a reporting product used by many top AmLaw firm to measure the health of their pro bono programs. Paladin’s co-founder and COO Kristen Sonday told Legal IT Insider: “Pro Bono Manager is Pro Bono Net’s signature B2B tool and will help us improve reporting; provide advanced functionality; and scale our network of law firms.”
It’s acquisition will allow Pro Bono Net, which has been around for over two decades and has several products to its name, to invest more in its ‘bread and butter’ B2C market.
In terms of Paladin expanding its firm base, Sonday said: “Pro Bono Net and Manager power the lion’s share of law firms in New York that use reporting technology, so for us it was an opportunity to get involved in the New York market in a way that we haven’t before.
“This combined with our partnership with the US Justice Department brings us nationwide, so we are rapidly accelerating.”
Paladin, founded in 2015, has been regarded as a competitor to its longer standing rival Pro Bono Net, but Sonday says: “This is a statement that we have the same mission – to help people access lawyers. We think we can grow the pie of what is possible in the pro bono ecosystem.”
This acquisition is just the start of Paladin’s partnership with Pro Bono Net and Sonday said: “We already plan to work with them on their products; events; and data analysis – things that we can collaborate on and scale in a way that we couldn’t do on our own.”
She adds: “Their institutional knowledge and our data and technology is a really strong combination.”
Paladin in October appointed Litera’s former M&A head turned strategic adviser Haley Altman and Cisco’s former chief legal officer Mark Chandler to its board of directors, as the company ushers in a new phase of growth post its Series A financing.
In its Series A in May last year it raised $8m – bringing the sum raised to over $12m since its launch in 2015.
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