Onit Buys BusyLamp – 5th Acquisition Since 2019

Onit, the enterprise workflow and CLM platform, has bought BusyLamp, the legal spend and matter management company, in what is its fourth M&A deal in the last 12 months, and fifth since 2019. The move also adds to the growing consolidation of the legal tech market, which has been helped along by other acquisitive companies such as Litera.

The latest move by Onit follows the purchase of SimpleLegal, a legal ops, e-billing and budgeting system, in 2019; as well as Bodhala, a legal spend benchmarking pioneer, most recently this year. Together, combined with Onit’s existing workflow tools, the platform hopes to increase its market share in the legal spend area.

BusyLamp will operate as an independent subsidiary of Onit. Other than Bodhala and SimpleLegal, Onit has also bought NLP tool developer McCarthyFinch and doc automation company AXDRAFT, both in the last 12 months. So, in total that is five M&A deals, with four since 2020.

As BusyLamp is based in Germany, Onit also expects to see a boost to its global coverage. BusyLamp is headquartered in Frankfurt and ‘has a broad customer base that includes many of Europe’s largest enterprises’, the company said.

Commenting on the deal, Eric Elfman, CEO and co-founder of Onit, said: ‘The acquisition of BusyLamp fulfils several strategic priorities for Onit. First, it will be a valuable contributor to our continued rapid growth. Second, it embeds Onit and its solutions even more deeply into Europe.

‘With the BusyLamp team, we have some of the brightest minds in legal operations and technology on the ground in Germany, the UK and throughout the continent – experts who understand European customers’ unique needs. We’re now one of the largest ELM software providers in the world, with software that fits any corporate legal department’s requirements regardless of size or location. I want to welcome the entire BusyLamp team as we work toward an exciting future.’

While, Michael Tal, co-CEO and co-founder of BusyLamp, added: ‘Our mission at BusyLamp has always been to provide in-house counsel with the information, data, trust and tools they need to focus on the strategic management of their legal finances. By combining with Onit, we will greatly expand on this mission with a wider breadth of technology offerings, a full suite of legal and compliance solutions and immediate access to the leading legal AI and spend management experts.’

Is this a big deal? As the recent interview by Artificial Lawyer with Onit boss, Elfman, showed, there is much more expansion to come. Onit is five deals into an expansion plan that is not complete yet, and we have to assume there will be more deals to come.

The grouping together of so much expertise in the spend management area is significant and makes it a major competitor now in this field. That said, based on the recent interview, Onit’s future is not going to be just about dominating legal spend, and will likely expand into several other areas of inhouse operational needs.

Along with Litera, Onit is also sustaining the legal tech consolidation wave. This is clearly far from over.

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