Ediscovery Acquisitions Ahoy! TransPerfect Buys Digital Reef

Legal Technology Insider - October 5, 2012

TransPerfect Legal Solutions (TLS), a provider of legal support services, just announced the acquisition of Boston-based Digital Reef Inc. Digital Reef will become a division of TransPerfect Legal Solutions. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Founded in 2006, Digital Reef was named a market leader in IDC’s most recent MarketScape of standalone early case assessment (ECA) applications. Digital Reef is a leading ediscovery software* provider for corporations, law firms, and litigation support service providers with complex discovery requirements. The company’s ediscovery platform, available in both on-premise and SaaS versions, is an enterprise-scale solution used in legal matters, regulatory inquiries, and corporate investigations.

“Digital Reef has been increasingly used by the world’s largest corporations and law firms for multijurisdictional, complex cases. Combining Digital Reef’s unique Big Data processing power with the global footprint of TransPerfect will provide our clients with a new level of service and scalability,” said Ivan O’Sullivan, chief operating officer of Digital Reef. “TransPerfect has more than 80 offices worldwide and an array of global data centers. Our clients will benefit from greater support around the country and around the world.” As part of the merger, Mr. O’Sullivan will continue to lead Digital Reef and will join TransPerfect’s senior management team.

According to TransPerfect Co-CEO Phil Shawe, “We are very excited to welcome the Digital Reef team to the TransPerfect family. TLS clients will benefit from having access to a variety of ECA tools delivered by the Digital Reef platform. Further, Digital Reef’s facility is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest throughput ediscovery data center in the world, with the capability of processing more than 17 terabytes of data per day. This capability has earned Digital Reef its reputation for being the industry’s fastest, most scalable ediscovery software solution.”

COMMENT: Ediscovery insiders we’ve spoken to have all consistently rated Digital Reef as one of the most exciting products in the market. So why all these acquisitions this year? Because unlike in the UK, ediscovery is a booming business in the United States with IBIS World predicting that ediscovery solutions provider revenues will reach US$ 1.1 billion by the end of 2016.