ACC's 2024 Annual Meeting did not let us down! While we in sunny Nashville, we were able to meet up with Yves Garagnon of DiliTrust and Bruce Kuennen of doeLEGAL to discuss the recent merger of their organizations and the future of the global legal landscape.
CCBJ: We’re delighted to welcome Bruce Kuennen and Yves Garagnon to discuss the recent merger of DiliTrust and doeLEGAL. Please give us some background about the respective companies and how this marriage came about.
Bruce Kuennen: doeLEGAL, which has been operating for a little over 50 years, has focused consistently on technology. DOE is short for Delaware Office Equipment, which way back when was about typewriters, adding machines, dictation devices and the like. Two of the key defining characteristics of DOE have been our evolution with technology and our symbiotic relationship with lawyers and legal professionals who manage a lot of data. That has been our focus. In the early 2000s, we embraced cloud-based services while steadily sharpening our focus on two areas: enterprise legal management software and e-discovery services. Those have been the core businesses for doeLEGAL and DiliTrust, which offers a broader platform that includes a governance suite, entity management, contract management – basically a document management hub for secure storage. In addition, DiliTrust also has a litigation module similar to matter management. doeLEGAL never really had the full breadth of an ELM platform to help support other functions within a corporate legal department such as contract management, entity management and the like.
When DiliTrust sought to acquire us, it was a very positive, synergistic opportunity. It enhances our product suite and gives us a broader set of software that we can take to corporate legal departments. We're making them more efficient with a full suite that enhances communication across the platform. In addition, we have embedded a proprietary AI, developed by DiliTrust, across the platforms. One of the great benefits of this merger is that the two companies now have the opportunity to focus on the U.S. market. DiliTrust has not been active in the U.S. market, but now we can dig in and help doeLEGAL expand with the services offered outside the U.S.
It would seem you’ll face challenges arising from technical integration but also from the regulatory landscape as you bring doeLEGAL clients into compliance with DiliTrust standards. How are you dealing with these issues?
Kuennen: Absolutely. There are, of course, security needs and requirements across organizations. For example, DiliTrust is an ISO SOC II certified organization. We’re making sure we're managing data appropriately for clients and processes, Fortuitously, it’s not a big issue because the organizations are like-minded in that regard.
When you look at what we're going to do with the platform, as we continue selling our software or ELM platform, we'll be adding AI capabilities that we're missing, as well as updating the user interface. This will enhance what we offer to existing and future clients. In addition, working with DiliTrust we can create another matter management platform on their technology so we can work with more small or mid-sized corporations and expand the reach of the software outside the U.S. by taking advantage of DiliTrust’s international footprint, which features locations in 10 countries and multi-language capabilities.
As you know, our core readership is comprised of corporate legal departments, directors and C-suite executives. Yves, from that perspective, please elaborate on what Bruce has been saying.
Yves Garagnon: One thing I’d like to emphasize is that we've been in business for a long time and, therefore, have been talking to chief legal officers and general counsel around the world for many years. We understand their needs, how they are evolving, and how technology can help them become more efficient. In other words, we can help them overcome their challenges. For example, for several years we've been trying to put technology into a cloud platform that serves the needs of legal departments in corporates in various countries in Europe. We also grew globally in the Middle East, Africa, Canada, Latin America. At some point, our focus turned to growing in the U.S., and we believe that combining with existing skills and international experience, as this merger will do, is the right way to proceed.
We've had many discussions with both legal teams to make sure that there is common ground, including a shared willingness to serve legal departments with high-quality tools and technology backed with exemplary service. Once we were sure that this was the case, we decided to work on the mechanics of combining and how we can leverage our expertise to keep moving forward. It has been very exciting to collaborate, and we are now equally excited to execute.
Pulling this together across so many countries and cultures is clearly a massive challenge. Navigating the regulatory regimes must be daunting. Please talk to us about how your two companies, and your clients, will realize the benefits of this merger.
Garagnon: Yes, there are different regulations depending on the country, but the main tasks of legal departments remain the same. In executing them, there may be different constraints in different places, but we try to keep a balance with our platform so that it's as standardized as possible and allows us to deliver as many features as we can that help legal departments proceed quickly and efficiently. It’s important that we leverage previous experiences to deliver features that are genuinely useful for users. At the same time, we need to bake in enough flexibility so we can configure our system to handle different regulations. That’s the balance we’re shooting for, and we believe we've been managing to do that.
Kuennen: Another important point is that with locations in different regions, there will, of course, be different regulations. That means not only understanding what corporations in that region deal with, but also having the security and framework for storing information wherever you need it to meet security requirements. Especially in the U.S., the data's pretty much going to need to be stored in the U.S. To handle that, you need the flexibility that comes with the different offices so you can host where you need and deal with the cost of that.
Garagnon: We try to combine the technical expertise in areas like security so we can make sure we can guarantee our customers that the data stays where it is. It is also important to combine business expertise with legal expertise in the countries where we operate so when we talk with our local customers so we can pull it all that together and identify features that are benefit the vast majority of our customers globally.
We combine both technical expertise in areas like security so we can make sure we can guarantee our customers that their data stays where it is.
Talk to us about the way relationships work. Do you perceive yourselves as mostly a response tool, where you're brought in after something's happened, or more of a prep tool, writing guidelines, running table-top exercises and the like?
Kuennen: It’s more of a day-to-day platform that an organization uses to manage risk on the front end. It's not triage on the back end. It's about managing your requirements on the front end around entity management – your portal, your board documents, things like that that are required of organizations by different countries. Having that data stored in one place, accessible, easy to find, read and manage, that's the critical aspect.
Garagnon: The business and the role of legal departments and general counsel within corporates has changed over time It used to be more reactive, responding to requests as they came in. The classic examples are litigation and compliance with new regulations. Now, general counsel serve as part of the executive committee tasked with helping the company conduct business in the most appropriate and efficient manner. They contribute daily to the business. They want their tools to operate at a pace that helps them align with the general strategy of the company and the day-too-day execution of the business. They want that their tools to help them play a role in conducting and growing the business and complying with all the regulations pertinent to the business’s operations.
Kuennen: I agree. Legal departments are more proactive in managing things. It’s been a transition over the last several years. As in-house teams increase their value, supporting organizations get more proactive with the tools they offer in-house counsel.
Much of this comes down to presenting what we do in a manner that shows how what we do can enhance what they do daily. It’s about being more efficient. It's about also understanding that meeting regulations and regulatory requirements for governance processes that they need to meet. It starts with understanding what a legal department or in-house attorneys are managing and how they're doing things today. They may have multiple platforms or multiple systems they use.
For example, they might have a separate entity management platform, a separate board portal, a separate contract management, etc. So, they could be working with four or five different vendors and they're not getting the economies of scale by consulting with a vendor that might have three of those platforms. So, there's different ways that you must approach it. Every in-house counsel you speak with is a little bit different because they have requirements based on the business. Understanding that and getting to know where they're dealing with and help them figure out what that path is – that’s the place you want to be.
Let’s talk about your vision for the future of the combined companies.
Garagnon: Yes, maybe one or two additional thoughts on how we are combining. We have 2,000 customers we already serve globally within DiliTrust, and will add more than a hundred customers that doeLEGAL serves here in the U.S. Our goal is to put all that experience together, with all the teams coming from DiliTrust and doeLEGAL so that we can grow in the U.S. by leveraging doeLEGAL’s knowledge across this robust platform that that covers all the needs of legal departments. This looks very promising, and we are very excited about what lies ahead.
Kuennen: It's been a very positive experience for us as an organization in the U.S. because anytime you go through acquisitions, you just don't know for sure what's going to happen. But DiliTrust has been tremendous at communication, and we’ve been adding staff consistently, which is good as we move forward. The measure of our success will be the satisfaction of the legal professionals with whom we work as we provide tools and platforms that will make their lives better.
Published November 6, 2024.
