While e-discovery companies continue to dominate merger & acquisition news in legal technology, much of the industry still looks to artificial intelligence (AI) as the harbinger of change. Among the companies looking to beef up its AI offerings is document management provider iManage. On May 24, the company announced its acquisition of RAVN Systems, a relative newcomer to legal technology but a heavyweight among AI technology providers in the legal industry.

As part of the acquisition, iManage plans on integrating RAVN's technology into its current platform, automating document management tasks. According to a statement announcing the acquisition, for documents in the iManage ecosystem, this integration means automating classification based on content. For the document content itself, it means identification, extraction, and finding of important information. Additionally, iManage plans to have the ability to analyze a document and determine whether it is subject to compliance requirements.

Representatives of both iManage and RAVN wouldn't comment on the financial terms of the acquisition, but iManage vice president of business development Sandeep Joshi told Legaltech News that all of RAVN's existing staff will now operate under iManage as its own employees. Meanwhile, RAVN's four co-founders will lead RAVN's employee base.