E-discovery has been by far the most focused on vertical in the legal technology marketplace. Up until recently, ALM's Legaltech conference was widely known in the industry to be essentially an ever-increasing parade of e-discovery vendors . Reminiscing on years past, Consilio CEO Andrew Macdonald said he remembers being in attendance and thinking to himself, “this is a market that's ripe for consolidation.”

Whether the e-discovery market is at a clear maturation point is not quite clear. Market researchers have been announcing the continued growth and consolidation in e-discovery repeatedly over the last few years – research group Gartner predicted that the industry was ripe for consolidation as far back as 2013 , while competing market research group Forrester predicted the same even longer ago, in 2010 .

But while consultants have been quick to call out “flurries” of mergers and acquisitions that could point to broader market consolidation, the number of deals in this space doesn't seem to have noticeably spiked over time. Data compiled by Rob Robinson, a legal tech marketing freelancer, on his blog Complex Discovery shows a fairly steady rate of mergers and acquisitions since he began tracking the market nearly 12 years ago.