Robert Ambrogi Blog
Global legal services provider Integreon yesterday announced its acquisition of the cloud-based litigation management platform Allegory, a company founded in 2012 by former Gibson Dunn litigator Alma Asay. Asay is joining Integreon as chief innovation officer, legal solutions, and all of her Allegory team is moving to Integreon.
Alma Asay
With the acquisition, Asay and Integreon CEO Bob Rowe told me during an interview this morning, they plan to offer a true end-to-end solution for litigators and in-house legal departments, as well as to build out a broader blending of technology and human resources in ways that will be disruptive in the legal industry.
Many vendors claim to provide end-to-end products for litigation, Rowe said, but this acquisition will enable integration in a true end-to-end fashion, from e-discovery straight through to litigation management, and including not just document discovery, but also depositions, pleadings, witness statements, interrogatories and requests for admission, court rulings, and everything else related to a case.
The acquisition will also benefit in-house legal departments, Rowe and Asay said, giving them greater access to the day-to-day aspects of all their litigation matters and enabling in-house and outside counsel to work together on cases more closely.
In recent years, Asay pointed out, corporate counsel have sought greater control over their e-discovery matters, both to manage costs and to be more involved. As they’ve begun to get e-discovery under control, they’ve turned to other aspects of litigation. One obstacle they’ve faced is that many law firms’ litigation management tools are behind the firewall and inaccessible to in-house.
“Litigation teams more and more need a cloud-based solution where outside counsel, inside counsel and everyone on the litigation team can all build their case together,” Asay said.
Bob Rowe
Allegory will soon release a new dashboard specifically designed for corporate counsel to oversee their matters, part of an upgrade to Allegory’s user interface that will be rolled out within the next couple of months.
In the e-discovery services it provides, Integreon primarily uses the Relativity document-review platform. Allegory had already built an API that allowed documents to be moved from Relativity into Allegory with the click of a button. A number of other APIs are now in the works to facilitate integration with not only other e-discovery platforms, but also document management systems such as iManage and other litigation-related platforms.
The eventual goal is for Integreon to have a platform that is the hub of a variety of integrations to allow complete management of litigation matters from a central platform.
This acquisition, Rowe said, is just one step in what will be a series of moves by Integreon to shake up the legal industry.
“We’re excited to really try to be disruptive in the industry in a way that blends technology and human resources,” Rowe said. “You can expect to hear a lot from us going forward on a regular basis.”
The ABA Journal profiled Asay earlier this year as a Legal Rebel. As the profile notes, she has developed a reputation as a couch surfer, having no permanent home address and staying with friends and family as she worked to build her startup.
I asked her today if now she’ll get an apartment. She did not give me a clear yes or no, but laughed and said that part of the reason she felt Integreon was a good fit for her was that she doesn’t have to work out of any particular office and that it is as nimble a company as Allegory was.