LexisNexis has announced that it has acquired Closd, a Paris-based legal transaction management system.
Closd will become part of LexisNexis Legal & Professional. The acquisition of Closd is part of a global strategy to develop an ecosystem of solutions to serve legal professionals with analytics, legal document management and decision support tools, they said.
Closd operates a legal transaction management SaaS platform that makes the management of complex legal projects simpler, safer and faster. Its end-to-end legal project management solution includes automated workflow management, secure document sharing, data rooms, electronic closing, transaction bible generation and document archiving. The Company serves more than 42,000 users consisting of transactional lawyers, in-house legal counsels and dealmakers in Europe and beyond.
Philippe Carillon, President of LexisNexis Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: ‘Closd has quickly become a top-tier provider of legal transaction management. Its technological edge in legal workflow management, data rooms and electronic signatures will be combined with our own strengths in advanced technologies and content to deliver products that enable our customers to work in more effective and efficient ways. This acquisition is in line with our organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of analytics and workflow automation solutions that are natural additions to our existing business.’
Closd co-founder and CEO, Grégoire Debit, said: ‘We are proud to join LexisNexis and to contribute to the group’s cutting-edge innovation strategy. Synergies between our entities and products are clear. This alliance with an established global provider of legal information and technology will boost our growth and the development of our solutions, and help our internationalization strategy, in a booming sector. We truly look forward to building the future of work for legal professionals with the LexisNexis team.’
Is this a big deal?
Yes, primarily in terms of what appears to be a new strategy statement from the legal tech giant. I.e. ‘This acquisition is in line with our organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of analytics and workflow automation solutions that are natural additions to our existing business.’
This suggests that there could be more M&A deals to come, and with a wallet the size of LexisNexis’ that could mean quite a lot of action in the next year or two – if they wanted to grow more inorganically. But, we shall see…
LexisNexis has not made that many legal tech purchases in the last few years. It has a JV with Axiom spin-out, Knowable, to make legal data dashboards for corporates. And some years back it bought LexMachina and RAVEL to provide the NLP capabilities it needed to update its legal research offering.
It’s also interesting to consider if all the moves that Thomson Reuters has made recently have been a driver? The rival has bought HighQ and Caselines in the last couple of years, and it has formed an alliance with Deloitte recently to sell into corporates. It has also built its Marketplace that brings multiple offerings and vendors together, and is generally on an expansion drive in relation to legal tech.
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