With ILTA 2017 fading into memory, our final briefings with five fast-growing legal technology vendors are worth the wait. Note the 40-50% growth rate of independents such as Opus 2 International, Legal Workspace and Alphaserve. Here is what you need to know.
Opus 2 International, founder Graham Smith-Bernal
Provides collaborative workspaces for litigation and M&A practices worldwide
Tell us about your recent private equity investment?
We just sold a minority stake in Opus 2 to Rothschild’s private equity business Five Arrows Principal Investments. It is a significant minority stake.
We’ve now launched Opus 2 Forum: fully collaborative M&A deal room software. The law firms having to do due diligence in our world could be doing that as a team, collaborating and sharing but the technology is more prehistoric than litigation.
Strategically, Five Arrows investment in our business will assist us with the launch of those news product. It will help us scale up and accelerate our growth do more things with the launch of these new product.
What’s your recent growth look like?
Our revenue has grown by 50% in the last 12 months and our profit by over 200%.
Can you tell us about new client wins?
Yes, General Electric have just signed an enterprise agreement for Magnum. We have more than a dozen firms in the US on enterprise licenses. One is Norton Rose Fulbright, which signed 15 months ago. In Singapore we’re helping Maxwell Chambers to design an arbitration room.
And your latest vital statistics?
We have a staff of 150, including 30 developers in Edinburgh and the head is one of the leading brains in neuroscience. We have offices in London, Singapore, San Francisco, New York, Edinburgh and Denver.
Legal Workspace, founder and CEO Joe Kelly
Private cloud-based work environment for law firms
Who are you and what’s exciting right now?
A private cloud solution to host all legal apps, we only work with law firms and have been doing it since 2008.
We move law firm apps and data into our cloud and decommission everything their end so they don’t have to worry about managing an IT department and it frees up IT people to work with attorneys instead of crawling under a desk.
We spent five years explaining what cloud is and now people get it and we’re right there in the sweet spot. We’re doing this for hundreds of law firms and the security we have is way better – we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security. Another thing that’s really important is compliance – we might have a customer say, ‘we want to work with MasterCard next week, can you talk to them?’ And they can put us on the phone to MasterCard.”
Tell us your vital statistics?
We employee 40 people and have customers in the East and West Coast and some international. In terms of growth, we’ve almost doubled our revenue in the past year.
Alphaserve, CEO Arup Das
Managed IT, cloud and cybersecurity services to the legal and asset management industry
Who are you?
We provide smart-sourced IT services to law firms and the asset management industry. The company has over 250 employees and serves clients in 300 cities and 38 countries around the globe. Our focus is primarily on AmLaw 100 firms.
What was hot at ILTA?
Artificial Intelligence: we recently launched AI and machine learning applications. We identify real opportunities for business process improvement based on each firm’s practice areas and expertise. IT resources are then leveraged to develop the custom solutions that address each firm’s unique needs.
Firms are also interested in our ‘Lights on IT Outsourcing’. We offer IT management as a service for law firms that are interested in growing and managing their practice, and not just spending more resources on basic infrastructure to keep up with their growth.
Firms today need their IT departments to focus on strategic, innovative solutions that differentiate them and even generate revenue where possible.
How fast is the company growing?
The company is growing at a rate of 40%/year.
InOutsource, founder Nancy Beauchemin
Information governance consulting and technology implementation. Fastest growing area: BI and analytics
Who are you and what’s exciting right now?
We work in information governance, business intelligence and records management, are partners with Intapp and Filetrail and we’ve expanded our business intelligence services by partnering with Grow, Qlik and Sisense
Our BI and analytics area is the fastest growing – a lot of sessions at ILTA were around data analytics, where we’ve taken a non-traditional approach – partnering with two tools that are well known enterprise platforms. A lot of vendors have pin-pointed solutions to solve a BI or analytics problem. They look at the financial data and build a profitability dash board. We felt they should have a more strategic enterprise approach.
Tell us your vital statistics?
I’ve been in business for 15 years and have just shy of 50 employees. Most of our clients are in the Am Law 100-200 suites. We do business with about 90 in that space and have quite a few firms in Canada. We only work with law firms.
What was the big focus at ILTA?
BI and analytics are no longer an option – law firms have to make data driven decision just to stay in business. A year ago, when we had that same messaging people had eyes glazed but this year there a rush for knowledge.
LexMachina, chief evangelist and general counsel Owen Byrd
Uses data drawn from state and federal judgments to predict the behaviours and outcomes of litigation. Lex Machina is no longer an independent but it’s nonetheless interesting to see its growth in staff since 2011.
Who are you and what’s exciting right now?
We’re headquartered in Silicon Valley in Menlo Park. We’ve got about 100 people. We’ve grown a lot since 2010 when we spun out of Stamford and were acquired by LexisNexis in late 2015. We’re a very distributed workforce with engineers and sales folks all over the country.
Who are your clients?
We’ve got over half the Am Law 100 as customers as well as well as lots of midsized and boutique firms and lots of corporate legal department.
Tell us about recent growth?
When I joined in 2011 I was number five or six so it’s been a Silicon Valley rocket ride of growth. The easiest growth metric to point to is people, where we were just a handful of us but with a little bit of backing from Lexis we’re now over 100.
What was hot at ILTA?
I was on a panel on Moneyball for Lawyers – that’s based on the book of that name and the movie about how data and analytics transformed baseball and is now transforming the business and practice of law.