Robert Ambrogi Blog
At ILTACON today, BigHand, a company that provides operational and financial products for law firms, said that it has acquired Digitory Legal, whose platform provides cost analytics designed to help law firms and in-house legal departments better price their services and manage their costs.
Digitory says its analytics “unlocks information below the surface of the billing data which identifies what ‘actually’ happened on a matter, delivering actionable cost data to predict and refine future pricing and proposals.”
Digitory was founded by CEO Catherine Krow (pictured above), who left a partnership at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, one of the world’s largest law firms, to start the company.
Krow joins BigHand effective today, along with the rest of her Digitory team.
Last October, the College of Law Practice Management named Digitory Legal winner of its 2021 Innovation Award for a unique partnership with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan to drive diversity, equity and inclusion among its outside counsel by applying analytics to billing data to get a deeper understanding of the type and quality of work firms are assigning to diverse lawyers.
“Throughout my time practicing law I witnessed the growing tensions between lawyers and clients frustrated by poorly scoped and inaccurate budgets and fee structures which lead to cost overruns and/or write-offs – something neither lawyers nor their clients want,” Krow said in a statement announcing the deal.
“The source of this frustration was the poor quality of billing data and the difficulty of using that data to create innovative and accurate fee proposals. I started Digitory to solve this problem.
Eric Wangler, managing director of people productivity at BigHand, said that the two companies had been partners for several years.
“Both businesses have been big advocates of impacting law firms’ journeys in being more diverse, so we kept bumping into each other at events and discussions about the progress being made here,” he said. “In the end, it just made sense for us to join forces as partners.”
Financial details for this transaction were not disclosed.