As Artificial Lawyer wrote in October, Hg – the owner of Litera – has made a major investment in international legal tech and legal sector services company Septeo. The investment fund has today officially confirmed the transaction.
Hg will invest alongside founders Philippe Rivière, Jean-Luc Boixel, Hugues Galambrun and the management team, which will continue to be led by Hugues Galambrun. The terms of deal are undisclosed, but last month this site highlighted that Hg’s investment will be for the majority of the company’s equity.
Although not so well known in the UK and US, Septeo is a major legal tech provider supporting notaries, law firms, corporate legal departments and real estate property managers in France, Belgium, Canada and in parts of the US. Founded in 1988, Septeo now has over 12,000 clients and more than 120,000 users, served by over 1,400 employees.
It also provides services, such as its Ecostaff division, which offers admin staff to the legal sector.
The investment reinforces Hg’s focus on legal and regulatory compliance tech, representing the 11th investment in this sector across Europe and North America, with over €1.5bn invested in the sector to date, they said.
Hugues Galambrun, CEO at Septeo, said: ‘Hg will actively support Septeo’s investment in the development of new innovative solutions, helping us to achieve further productivity and efficiency gains for our customers. This partnership with Hg will also help us continue to pursue our growth strategy, enabling us to bring new talent into the business, strengthen our innovation and continue with targeted acquisitions.’
Jean-Baptiste Brian, Sebastien Briens and Joris Van Gool, Partners at Hg, said: ‘Hg invests in businesses that demonstrate compelling long-term growth potential, built around strong technology foundations and talented teams. Septeo is an exceptionally high-quality provider of software serving the LegalTech space and there is an exciting opportunity to further scale what is already a great platform, to help drive digitalisation across the legal system and beyond.’
How the company’s many applications will be integrated into Hg’s growing legal tech stable is not clear yet. Combining in a close integration with Litera has not been mentioned …..yet. But, it seems inevitable that there will need to be some kind of co-ordination with Litera and Septeo, given how the two groups are both covering the legal market.