Litera has acquired BigSquare, which provides business intelligence solutions to a raft of US law firms including Am Law firms Davis Polk & Wardwell, Shearman & Sterling and Crowell & Moring.
BigSquare provides attorneys with dashboards to help them understand their own financial data. It also includes an application that enables end users to perform profitability analysis against a raft of different metrics across the firm.
Pieter van der Hoeven, founder of BI provider Clocktimizer, which was acquired by Litera in April 2021, told Legal IT Insider that there is no significant overlap with Clocktimizer, commenting: “We have some overlapping customers with BigSquare but while they do have some form of similar product, they don’t really. The real thing is that BigSquare tells me when customers have paid, and all the financial data that the attorney is facing. And then on the other hand we have this set of costs and how do we calculate profitability. What we really liked about BigSquare is that they are a true SaaS software that drives the business and it’s not a case of ‘we have a ton of consultants to do it for you to make up for a shortage in the technology.’”
Shearman & Sterling uses BigSquare and Meredith Williams-Range, chief knowledge officer said: “Two key things make BigSquare stand out. First, we can configure the dashboard to fit our specific needs without needing engineers. Second, the system is fully cloud-based. BigSquare helps to make Shearman’s goal of providing technology on any device, anytime, anywhere a reality.”
She adds: “The initial implementation only took months compared to many years with other providers in the market.”
Commenting on the deal, Sheryl Hoskins, Litera CEO, said: “Law firms continue to seek and move to cloud-based solutions, including financial BI. We view BigSquare as a valuable, strategic addition to Litera’s Firm Intelligence portfolio to deliver what customers seek regarding data and insights accessible anywhere.”
BigSquare will scale by leveraging Litera’s global networks, partners, and expanding its footprint among the largest law firms. The long-term aim is to bring BigSquare’s expertise into Litera’s suite of Firm Intelligence products so its 800,000 users worldwide will get invaluable business intelligence and data insights from Foundation, pricing and budgeting intelligence from Clocktimizer, and marketing intelligence from Concep.
Keep an eye out for our full analysis of the acquisition.