Just announced at ILTACON in Las Vegas is the combination of four leading legal document technologies – Litéra, Microsystems, XRef and The Sackett Group – into a single business they believe will better serve their more than 1,000 legal and corporate customers across the full document lifecycle.

The new platform is majority backed by K1, a Los Angeles-based investment firm focused on enterprise software companies globally. K1 has invested over $100 million of equity behind the combination, with additional capital available for further acquisitions. K1 had already invested in Microsystems, which later acquired XRef. Today’s news brings Litéra and The Sackett Group into the combined entity.

The name of the new company has not been decided. Litéra and Microsystems will continue to operate separately for the time being and their management structures will remain intact. The Sackett Group will be merged into Microsystems over the next 60-90 days. All employees will continue with the new company and all existing offices will remain open.

The new company will continue to deliver each company’s current products while also  devoting resources to the next generation of solutions. All of the products already had integrations that enabled them to work with one another and several of their customers already use all four products on an integrated basis.

“The combination will continue to improve workflows for lawyers and corporate counsels worldwide by creating the most comprehensive and robust integrated suite for documents,” said Raina Massand, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Litéra.

“We are excited to build upon each company’s unique strengths to continue to revolutionize the legal software market,” said Paul Domnick, president of Litéra. “We will continue to strengthen our use case for existing customers, expand geographically and move forward into additional verticals as well.”

“Our products have an immediate and measurable ROI for our clients. More importantly they assist our customers with drafting high quality products for their clients,” said Avaneesh Marwaha, a former lawyer and the current President of Microsystems. “Our goal is to improve lawyers’ ability to focus on their clients, not their documents.”

One of the clients that already uses all four systems is Baker McKenzie. Dan Surowiec, global CIO of Baker McKenzie, praised the move. “By bringing these brands together we are excited about the opportunities for even greater innovation alongside the efficiencies of working with one vendor to address our document lifecycle needs.”

I met with the principles of these companies this just a few moments ago and will report more details as my time allows.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.