Litera: The Legal Tech Juggernaut Takes a Breather

Remember 2021 and 2022? Litera was buying so many companies that at times it was hard to keep track.

In August of 2022, I was at the ILTACON conference at National Harbor, Maryland. Litera had acquired two companies in the previous week, business intelligence company, BigSquare, and talent management software company, Micron Systems. These followed the substantial acquisitions of Foundation Software, Prosperoware, Workshare, and Kira Systems. Per Crunchbase, 15 acquisitions in the past 5 years.

I attended the Litera session, which was in a ballroom. Standing room only. The sense that something special was taking place was palpable. Litera’s new CEO, Sheryl Hoskins, introduced herself, mentioning her active duty in the Army. She was impressive .

Historically at ILTACON the companies with a big presence have been Thomson Reuters, Intapp, iManage, and NetDocuments. But in 2022, Litera had the momentum. They also had the ample pockets of Hg. And Hg was looking for growth.

A lot has changed in the economy in the past six months. The threat of a recession has loomed large. Interest rates are up. Law firms have laid-off associates. Many of the big tech companies have laid-off thousands of people.

From where I stand, legal tech appears to be holding strong. Very few legal tech dedicated companies are public, so we don’t get a quarterly window, or even an annual window, into revenues and profits. However, layoffs in legal tech have been limited thus far. At least two e-discovery companies have had layoffs. On the other hand, Exterro just acquired e-discovery rival Zapproved. Several legal tech firms, including NetDocuments, iManage, Aderant, and Litera are actively hiring.

It makes sense for Litera to take time to work on integrating all of the solutions which it has acquired in the past three years. Keep an eye on Litera. If we manage to have a soft landing, look for Litera and Hg to lead the way again.

-Maureen

The Modern Lawyer Report from Above the Law and Litera

How Technology, Mobile Devices, and AI Are Shaping the Legal Industry in 2022

In February of 2022, Above the Law interviewed 500 attorneys on their views on technology, mobile devices, artificial intelligence (AI), and more. Of those 500, Associates made up 32%, Partners were 26%, and in-house counsel were over 12%. Above the Law and Litera have published their findings in The Modern Lawyer Report.

Over 58% over these lawyers consider themselves to be slightly ahead of the curve or a trendsetter in terms of use of technology. The lawyers who agreed to participate in this technology survey appear to be more tech-savvy than the general lawyer population.

Above the Law / Litera

Mobile Device Usage

Roughly 57% of attorneys reported that they can do “many things” or “everything” on mobile devices. From our vantage point this seems high, but consider the point above, that the majority of the attorneys who responded self-report that they are ahead of the curve in using technology. From our view of law firms, the third option, “I can follow email on mobile but that’s about it,” is the the common state of the art in law firms today.

Above the Law / Litera

Document review and approval is certainly the greatest need which attorneys and legal professionals have on mobile devices. Our clients tell us that the ability to review, annotate, compare, sign, and email documents in order to have complete workflows is their goal.

Above the Law / Litera

What is delaying mobile device adoption?

The report cities, “One partner stated, “My vision is too poor to work on such small screens,” while an in-house respondent noted that “security risks preclude the ethical use of mobile for most legal tasks.”

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence or AI is a somewhat amorphous term, granted. Over 60% of these advanced technology users consider AI to be valuable to business success in legal services.

Above the Law / Litera

One of the conclusions of The Modern Lawyer Report is that, especially with respect to mobile devices and artificial intelligence, lawyers are not taking advantage of technology’s full capabilities. There is plenty of opportunity for them to adopt these technologies further.

Update: Here is a link to register and download the report from Litera.

If you have questions or comments, I’d like to hear from you. Write to: contact at mobilehelix dot com

-Maureen

Maureen Blando is the President and COO of Mobile Helix, the makers of the LINK encrypted app for lawyers. LINK provides simple workflows for Document Management and Email in a single, secure app. Note: the LINK App offers font sizes up to XXL. (See above. for relevance.)

🔥 Legal Tech: Tracking 12 Months of IPOs and Funding Rounds

A post by Artificial Lawyer provides a clear summary of the trend in the first half of 2021, “Legal Tech Funding Hits $1.4BN, While M&A Soars.” Here, James Goodnow writes about “The Insider’s View On Legaltech VC Funding,” with some salient funding insights from Kira CEO and co-founder, Noah Waisberg. Kira was recently acquired by Litera.

But the reality is that investments are clipping along at fast pace. It’s hard to keep up. I could not find a post which captured the current rounds, so I created a spreadsheet of the past 12 months of legal tech IPOs and funding rounds (Series A and higher). I’m not claiming that it is comprehensive. I’m sure that I’ve missed a few. If you have any to add or any corrections to offer, please let me know via: contact at mobilehelix dot com.

Legal Tech iPOs and Funding Rounds - 12 Months, 2021-November

On November 23, 2021, transcription company Verbit announced that they had closed $250 million in a Series E round that values the company at $2 billion. That’s after raising $157 million in a Series D in June 2021 at over $1 billion valuation, making it one of the first unicorns in legal tech. (To be accurate, Verbit serves more than the legal tech market.)

Also in November, Grammarly, another company with business in legal and beyond, raised $400 million at a valuation of $13 billion. I had to double-check that. Wow. Grammarly has a tool which corrects and improves writing.

Here’s my earlier post on unicorns in legal tech, “We have FOMO in legal tech!”

-Maureen

We have FOMO in legal tech! 🦄

What is FOMO?

Fear Of Missing Out

Today’s legal tech headline:

“Litera secures further investment from Hg”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But we know that:

  • May 2019: Hg purchased Litera investment firm K1 Investment Management. At the time Hg Capital Trust stated that as part of the acquisition, it would lead an investment of $39M in Litera.
  • Litera has trebled in size, per CEO, Avaneesh Marwaha.
  • And from the same press release:
  • Litera is approaching more than 1,000 employees across 17 different countries
  • Litera also has gained over 10 times the number of users since Hg first invested, now serving over 15,000 customers
  • Since 2019, Litera has acquired twelve companies.

And there are 🦄 unicorns in legal tech!

November 2021: Everlaw raised a $202M Series D round at a valuation over $2B.

June 2021: Verbit raised $157 million in Series D funding at a valuation of over $1B.

April 2021: Clio raised a $110M Series E round at a valuation of $1.6B.

December 2020: Ironclad raised $100M in Series D funding at more than $950M valuation.

Ah, FOMO…

To quote investor Kjartan Rist on FOMO, “The fear of missing out on the next billion-dollar opportunity is one feeling that never really goes away.

FOMO is nothing new in Silicon Valley VC-land. But it’s new and exciting in the world of what is broadly referred to as “legal tech.” Legal tech has been known for slow adoption and conservative processes, including mainly using software which is deployed on-premises at the law firm or business entity. In many cases this changed with the pandemic. The overnight necessity to support attorneys and staff working from home catalyzed adoption of cloud-hosted software throughout legal.

My short summary of the phenomenon in legal tech:

☁️ Cloud scales = hyper growth potential

💉 Accelerated by the pandemic

⚖️ Legal (law firms, corporate legal) finally accepts Cloud/SaaS

💰 Capital wants in

🙌 Win / Win / Win

There’s more to this story. For example, FOMO leads to frothy valuations.

But for today…

🥳 Congratulations to the unicorns, the parties to M & A, the newly funded, and the rapidly growing companies in #legaltech! It’s an exciting time to be in legal tech.

-Maureen