The main opportunity to push for greater innovation and to draw on specialist capabilities obviously comes at contract time, and there is good news here. To keep up with rapidly changing technology requirements, corporate buyers have been trimming the sourcing cycle. The average contract length for IT and BPO deals shrunk from 4.8 years in 2007 to 4.3 years in 2017, according to IDC, and we expect it will settle at slightly more than 4 years.
Spire Capital today announced that it has closed on the sale of Lighthouse Global, a leading technology-enabled eDiscovery and advisory services business. Financial terms were not disclosed. Macquarie Group acted as exclusive financial advisor to Spire Capital and Lighthouse. Dentons served as legal counsel to Spire Capital and Lighthouse.
Morae Global Corporation today announced that it has acquired professional services information management specialist Phoenix Business Solutions. The deal strengthens Morae Global’s strategic direction and capabilities around artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology and reinforces client and industry requirements to work with a more robust and trusted legal services partnership.
Lightyear Capital LLC, a New York-based private equity firm focused on financial services, announced today that investment funds affiliated with Lightyear have acquired a controlling stake in Lighthouse, a leader in technology-enabled eDiscovery, compliance and information governance.
Recent decades have witnessed non-financial firms’ forays into venture capital by creating Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) divisions. CVCs differ from traditional VCs that are seeking pure financial returns. Instead, CVCs are in general strategic corporate divisions for incumbent firms to respond to negative innovation shocks, and CVCs help those firms to expose themselves to new technologies in order to fix their weaknesses and regain their innovation edge. These findings have implications for understanding entrepreneurial financing and corporate innovation policies.
Luminance, the leading artificial intelligence platform for the legal profession, has raised $10m from existing investors Invoke Capital, Talis Capital and Slaughter and May, valuing the company at $100m. The funds will be used to support Luminance’s recent product expansion and global growth, with the company now having four offerings, five global offices and over 70 employees since launching in 2016.
The arrangement provides longer-term capital for infrastructure, working capital and investment to support market expansion.
Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery and litigation platform, today announced a $25 million Series B funding round. New investor Menlo Ventures led the round, with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz. This brings Everlaw’s total funding to over $34 million.
Exterro® Inc., the preferred provider of software specifically designed for in-house legal and IT teams at Global 2000 and AmLaw 200 organizations, today [May 23, 2018] announced a strategic investment from Leeds Equity Partners, a sector-focused private equity firm with a two-decade history of investing in the knowledge industries. The investment will enable Exterro to accelerate development of its market-leading orchestrated e-discovery solution and continue to strengthen the resources required to deliver world-class support to its customers.
Heretik, a Chicago based software company that uses machine learning to make the contract review process smarter in Relativity, announced that it has completed its $2.4 million seed round of financing. Corazon Capital led the investment round with participation from existing investors Chicago Ventures and Relativity.