Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2017-05-17 20:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
I have always thought of Lighthouse eDiscovery as a stealth player in the eDiscovery market. In fact, I believe this is their first public merger/acquisition since Spire’s $30 million investment back in 2015. We never really covered them as market analysts in that 2008-2015 time period. Maybe their focus on developing corporate dedicated service relationship over chasing the big cases kept them under the radar. Now that they have won a couple of recent RFP’s for my own corporate clients, I have a much better appreciation for their capabilities and GTO strategy. Discovia seems to have a more traditional focus on matters and law firms. They are both Relativity shops, though Discovia seems to have partnered with some kCura alternatives such as IPRO and Brainspace. So how could this impact their existing customers?
As we covered in my recent ITLA webinar, merger fallout generally happens in slow motion (unless your top sales reps get poached by a competitor…). I would watch to see if Discovia phases out their document review offerings to follow the Lighthouse agnostic strategy or whether Lighthouse loses that market differentiator. They will have to standardize their services and technology systems, hopefully taking the best of both worlds. But change means stress when you have hot matters and active reviews in motion. I don’t see serious overlap that would result in a large RIF, but merging their pricing and consumption models may slow RFP responses and bids if they are not careful. Could be a real ‘better together’ story here rather than the typical ‘buying your customers’ one we have been seeing.
Stay skeptical my friends!
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients. His active research topics include analytics, mobile device discovery, the discovery impact of the cloud, Microsoft’s Office 365/2013 eDiscovery Center and multi-matter discovery. Recent consulting engagements include managing preservation during enterprise migrations, legacy tape eliminations, retention enablement and many more.
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