Since receiving increased private equity investment in 2017, e-discovery company Ipro has focused on moving increasingly left on the EDRM. First, it was the acquisition of information governance company NetGovern last July. Now, it has set its sights on legal holds and analytics, acquiring fellow e-discovery company ZyLAB.
The Amsterdam-based ZyLAB is known for its data science technology through its ZyLAB ONE e-discovery platform and ZyLAB Legal Hold products. Featuring a strong in-house analytics team with data science professor and longtime ZyLAB employee Johannes (Jan) Scholtes, the company has also increasingly moved into the SaaS and cloud offerings space in recent years.
Financial details of the transaction have not been made public. ZyLAB will continue as a standalone brand within the EU and be available as part of the Ipro suite of products as “ZyLAB, an Ipro company” in the U.S., Ipro CEO Dean Brown told Legaltech News. He added that the core of the ZyLAB’s employees will be continuing with Ipro, with some minor changes expected at the executive level.
Brown said Ipro had been exploring opportunities to expand its legal hold capabilities, and at one point had mulled over a partnership rather than an acquisition with ZyLAB. The opportunity to bring them on board, however, was “fortuitous” in his eyes, especially given how quickly Ipro had completed its integration with NetGovern.
“Start peeling pieces away, with their legal holds, their human capital, their analytics and their customer base—I thought this is just a perfect complement, very similar to what we found within NetGovern on information governance,” he explained.
He specifically pointed to the convergence of ZyLAB’s analytics capabilities and Ipro’s emphasis on active learning as an area of integration that could pay immediate dividends for customers. Ipro, Brown said, has worked on “opening the black box” in making its active learning capabilities more accessible for non-tech savvy lawyers. He believes being able to analyze data early in the legal process through ZyLAB technology will only aid that understanding.
“Most lawyers aren’t trained in statistics and the application of machine learning models and things like that, whether it’s corporate or law firm or government,” Brown explained. “What I think both companies have been doing extremely well is making those analytics available to users, making the power of it available.”
Ipro’s moves into legal holds and information governance are not unique among current e-discovery providers—many providers have either engaged in M&A or developed products with an increased focus on areas outside of core e-discovery processing and review. Brown said he’s seen the same, saying that “lots of people want to dip into the left side” of the EDRM. He added, though, that he sees a difference between extending a preexisting e-discovery solution into information governance, and providing purpose-built tools and analytics for pre-case uses.
“Our corporate customers are absolutely looking at ways to do more with the data as it sits, versus a full lift and shift, pick everything up send it downstream, process, review and apply analytics late,” he explained. “So we’re pretty religious about a mantra of reinventing the EDRM, meaning giving customers, whether it’s law firm, government, etc., more power.”
One thing you may not see immediately, though, is more Ipro acquisitions in this space. Even with NetGovern and now ZyLAB on board, and ParkerGale Capital’s funding, Brown reiterated the company’s commitment to natural growth, including in markets like the EU with ZyLAB’s addition. While he didn’t rule out future M&A, he said it would likely be more targeted to “tuck-in acquisitions in very specific areas.”
“ZyLAB and Ipro have been growing organically very nicely, and so you’re not kind of having to force that,” he added. “It was more, we found a great asset in terms of people and technology and chose to pull them in.”