Adding to a growing trend of acquisitions in the e-discovery industry, Xact Data Discovery (XDD) announced it has been recently acquired by New York-based private equity firm JLL Partners.

While the terms of the acquisition were not publicly disclosed, a release noted that XDD's founder and president Bob Polus, as well the company's current leadership team, will continue at the helm of the e-discovery company as it strives to grow its market presence.

In addition to its managed e-discovery data management services, XDD is best known for its BlackBar redaction tool and its XEDD e-discovery processing tool.

The acquisition marks the first investment in an e-discovery company by JLL Partners, which has primarily invested in middle-market companies across a number of sectors, including aerospace, healthcare and financial services.

In the release, Frank Rodriguez, managing director at JLL Partners, noted that JLL believes XDD “represents a compelling platform in the e-discovery space at a time when the growing complexity of litigation has made outsourced service providers like XDD more necessary than ever.”

Polus also noted that the acquisition is part of XDD's growth strategy and that XDD shares a similar culture and strategic vision with its new private equity owner.

The acquisition of XDD comes amid a flurry of M&A activity that has been redefining the e-discovery industry over the past several years. XDD itself, for instance, acquired F1 Discovery and Orange Legal Technologies in 2016.

Polus told Legaltech News that the reasons behind the acquisition were to expand XDD's customer base “with law firms and corporations in tier-1 and tier-2 markets nationwide, with an ongoing emphasis on training and education for customers and staff.”

At the time, he also noted that XDD will “continue to expand our merger and acquisition strategy nationwide in multiple markets for the foreseeable future.”

JLL's acquisition of XDD follows other private equity firms' entry into the e-discovery space. In April 2017, for example, ParkerGale Capital announced a “substantial investment” in e-discovery company Ipro Tech. Likewise, in August 2017, K1 Investment Management invested $100 million in a combined enterprise of drafting management companies Litéra, Microsystems and The Sackett Group. The aim of the combined enterprise was to develop and offer an end-to-end e-discovery solution.

The push for more comprehensive e-discovery services was also partially behind e-discovery and forensics provider HaystackID's recapitalization by Knox Capital in October 2017 as well.