Relativity partner, QDiscovery, a leading eDiscovery and digital forensics company, has bought Evidox, a Boston-based eDiscovery provider. The move is further evidence of a small, but growing wave of consolidation in the legal tech and ediscovery/doc review field.
The company (which Artificial Lawyer covered here recently) said that the deal would strengthen their overall offer by combining its innovative services such as QMobile and QPrivAlert, with Evidox’s stable of attorneys certified in digital forensics and its skilled project managers. It would also boost their overall coverage of the US market, especially in the Northeast.
This latter point is interesting as we can tend to think of legal tech companies as having a universal appeal, i.e. tech in one location is good in all others, but because eDiscovery is such a human-heavy process still, this type of deal is more akin to a merger of law firms in some ways in that certain companies have a regional reach and client base.
Evidox differs from some providers in that its philosophy is that eDiscovery is ‘not a technical issue; it is a legal issue with a technical solution. As such, questions of scope and cost remain in the hands of the supervising attorneys, not the technicians. The technology serves the legal process rather than driving it’, they said.
Dana Conneally, Chief Strategy Officer of Evidox, said: ‘It was important for us to join forces with a company where we can all continue to grow. The innovation at QDiscovery is enticing, and we are excited to contribute to it.’
David Barrett, CEO of QDiscovery, added: ‘At QDiscovery we have focused on recruiting the best project managers to our team and this new group fits well within our culture of collaboration and innovation, as well as our expected level of client service.’
For now, the two companies will continue to operate under their own names.