eDiscovery Daily Blog
The Mergers and Acquisitions Keep on Coming – eDiscovery Trends
As the saying goes, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard!” It has been close to two years since we looked at the mergers, acquisitions and investments in the eDiscovery industry, so it seems like a good time for an update. Here are a couple of resources for keeping up with eDiscovery industry changes in the provider community.
When it comes to compilations of information about eDiscovery, no one does it better than Rob Robinson. His Complex Discovery site keeps a running list of mergers, acquisitions and investments in the eDiscovery industry and goes all the way back to 2001, when LexisNexis acquired CourtLink – that was even before Kroll merged with Ontrack! He calls it a “non-comprehensive overview”, but there are over 170 transactions, so it’s got a lot of useful information.
Rob’s list not only keeps you abreast of changes in the industry, it’s a great “way back” machine for those who have been in the industry for a number of years and remember some of the providers who were acquired and no longer exist as their old names. There have already been nine transactions this year, involving names such as Applied Discovery (acquired by DTI Global) and AccessData’s Litigation Support Services (LSS) group (acquired just this week!). More to come, I’m sure.
A great resource for details about some of these transactions is Litigation Support Industry: eDiscovery Business News and Information Blog, published by Brad Jenkins, the President and CEO of CloudNine Discovery (shameless plug warning!), who just happens to be my boss (hey, it’s getting close to performance review time!). On his blog site, Brad re-publishes announcements and press releases, giving you a chance to catch details about those important announcements you might have missed, including this week’s major acquisition of three discovery providers. It’s a great place to get “the rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey used to say).
Despite the fact that mergers and acquisitions continue to happen regularly, it seems like there are always new players to take the place of those that no longer exist (case in point, the number of exhibitors at LegalTech the past four years has dropped less than 10%). So, the dramatic industry consolidation that many have predicted has yet to materialize.
So, what do you think? Are you up to date on the latest industry related mergers, acquisitions and investments? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.