Litera Strikes Again And Acquires Objective Manager

Rapidly expanding legal tech platform Litera has acquired UK-based Objective Manager (OM), a strategic planning and performance system for the legal market currently led by Arlene Adams, the founder of Peppermint Technology.

OM, which according to LinkedIn has about 40 staff and started in 2012, will be integrated into the Litera platform. The deal follows the recent buyouts of Foundation Software and Clocktimizer.

Commenting to Artificial Lawyer, Haley Altman, who is heading Litera’s M&A push, said: ‘Objective Manager will be a standalone part of Litera. We are focused on helping the team continue to expand the OM product offering and bring it to the US market.

‘Over time, we will talk to clients about integrations that will enhance the experience with Objective Manager, including bringing in matter data from Foundation and time and activity data from Clocktimizer to enrich the strategic plans and performance reviews. We see a lot of opportunity to expand the wider Litera offering with this acquisition.’

OM enables professional services firms to ‘turn their strategic plans into everyday habits’, the company said. Its SaaS platform makes plans visible across a firm and ‘aligns every person, process, and activity behind common objectives’.

Altman went on to add that in terms of how OM fitted into the wider strategy of Litera: ‘We strive to solve problems and pain points experienced by law firms and their legal teams. As a former partner, I struggled to collaborate across offices and teams to align in a collaborative way to achieve the firm’s strategic mission. We’d have different teams seeking to grow accounts with the same client in a siloed manner.

‘Objective Manager breaks down those silos and helps teams work together to achieve larger goals. With the pandemic, we’ve seen the power of remote workforces collaborating across geographic regions. We want to bring them the tools that enable and encourage that collaboration backed by data from different Litera systems that can deliver greater value to the client.’

So, there you go. The Litera project continues at pace and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. What’s especially interesting is that it is not going after big shiny brand names, but rather buying up often small to medium-size companies that have developed solutions for very particular problems. It is then placing them inside its platform to provide a broad, interconnected range of capabilities that are heavy on leveraging data and improving workflows.

Commenting on the acquisition, Adams, CEO of OM, added in a statement: ‘We are excited to join Litera and accelerate our platform presence in the broader North American market. We believe the addition of Objective Manager to Litera will enhance how we can help law firms use meaningful data to create great firm strategies alongside developing and retaining top talent.’

Adams is also still a non-executive director at Peppermint Technology, the legal tech company she founded back in 2010.