Rapidly expanding legal tech platform, Litera, has bagged leading French law firm De Pardieu Brocas Maffei as a client for its transaction management system. The move comes just a couple of months after Litera acquired US-based deal closing startup, Doxly, as well as Workshare with its Transact capability which was bought in July, and is an important validation of the combined companies’ offering.
The move is also noteworthy as De Pardieu is one of the pillars of the traditional Parisian legal establishment, and although not a large firm, with just 35 partners, it along with the likes of Bredin Prat and Darrois, are influential players in France and across mainland Europe.
This is in part because they have chosen to remain independent and not merge with the US and UK law firms that occupy a large part of the French commercial legal market.
These firms, and other members of the Paris elite, retain a powerful position in the local market and maintain important roles in M&A and finance work. They also maintain strong links with other independent law firms around the world. In this regard what they do matters, including what technology platforms they buy into.
It therefore will be interesting to see if Litera can now leverage this significant client win and pick up a series of additional top independent firms in Europe.
As to Litera’s platform, now with the added capabilities of Doxly; it enables users to create deal checklists, interact with and track all versions of documents needed for transaction closing, and get real-time status updates on the deal progress. In short, it seeks to automate and streamline many of the process level tasks that soak up associates’ time during a deal.
Emmanuel Fatôme, managing partner at De Pardieu, said: ‘[The Litera] deal management solution….proves very helpful and efficient as to handling large volumes of documents in the transactions in which our firm is involved.’
‘It has been very rapidly adopted internally, and by our clients and counter-parties,’ he added.
Meanwhile, Litera, which is based in the US and UK, with offices in Chicago, New York and London, is well aware this is an important client win in Europe for the company as it embarks on an international expansion drive.
Haley Altman, who was the founder of Doxly and is now Litera’s General Manager of Transaction Management, said: ‘We are delighted to extend the reach of our services throughout Europe by partnering with De Pardieu Brocas Maffei, one of the most influential firms in France. Our mission is to provide a simpler, more collaborative process for law firms and their clients at every step of the deal process.’
The announcement also follows the news that Litera has hired the CEO of another US-based deal platform, Tunji Willams of DealWIP, following the decision of the startup to halt activity (see story). Williams will now be Litera’s Director of Strategy for Transaction Management.
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