Jon Roscow this week joined circa 150-strong international software development company Xperate as head of development sales. Roscow is a well-known strategic consultant who most recently worked with information governance and records company Filetrail (now part of Litera) as their commercial director.
At Xperate, Roscow will work closely with the leadership team including founders Simon Hill and Mark Garnish to drive growth in sales. Xperate, which was founded in 2021 and has a sizeable development team in Pune, India, has seen fast growth both for its law firm and vendor development work. We asked Roscow why there is more requirement now for development work and what his role will be.
Caroline Hill (CH): So Jon, what’s the big news this week?
John Roscow (JR): The big news for me is that I’ve joined Xperate as head of development sales. I’ve been doing this a long time and Xperate as organisation is an exciting company to join at this moment in time, given they are only three years old and have rapidly gone from being really quite a fledgling outfit to being seen as a valuable part of the industry. They provide a niche within the market that is absolutely needed, ie development services for both law firms and technology vendors and what Mark and Simon the founders have identified is that there is a gap in terms of the requirements within this space.
CH: Why do you think there’s a gap at this time?
JR: There’s a lot of firms at looking at refreshing their technology stack and a lot of development going on in the market within both law firms and tech firms. If you take law firms first, obviously they have their requirements around new PMS, new document management systems and the like. But there’s also the integrations between those systems, and the responsibility sometimes is a little bit grey in terms of who looks after the integrations. Law firms traditionally used in-house teams but they can use an expert organisation with expertise both here and in India to use the latest technology solutions and also best practise.
CH: Tell us more about what your role will be?
JH: My role is going to be focused on working more closely with technology and legal technology providers. So, while we do a lot of work with law firms direct, obviously the other part of where Xperate is finding a lot of value is helping technology providers in terms of their time to market for new solutions and providing support with development. Vendors have increasing requirements from their client base to deliver new and up to date solutions and extra functionality to their environment, and using an outsourced model means they are much quicker in responding to their clients’ needs.
A key point is that Xperate are very much focused on the legal space and have the domain expertise attached to legal. Simon and Mark have worked in legal for 20 plus years and they understand the terminology of law firms. Having that overlay of being able to say ‘this is what legal is about,’ and therefore providing that expertise alongside the best of breed developers is a potent mix. They’ve also put a lot of work into the procedures and quality assurances to make sure that everything is done to the high standard expected by clients.
CH: So what can we look forward to in the near future in terms of new use cases?
JR: One is always going to be a bit careful saying this, but there’s nothing they can’t really do. We’ve already done projects around integrations and done technical refreshes on core products for certain vendors within the market. We’re taking solutions that are based on old technologies making them current. And we’re looking at new opportunities, so it’s really opening those conversations with vendors and saying, ‘What do you need, and where can we take this in 2026 and beyond?’”