Photo: Shutterstock Legal services providers are making bold moves, often through mergers and acquisitions, to stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The latest to make a play is Epiq, announcing on Monday its acquisition of Garden City Group (GCG), a legal services subsidiary of claims management provider Crawford & Company. According to Crawford & Company's 8-K filing with the SEC, the two parties entered into an agreement on June 15. Epiq and Epiq Canada paid about $42 million for GCG. Dentons served as legal adviser to Crawford & Company, while Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner served on behalf of Epiq. A release announcing the acquisition lists Alvarez & Marsal as an adviser as well. The move comes amid much M&A activity in the legal technology industry, particularly in the realm of e-discovery. A spate of acquisitions occurred in 2018 alone, including CloudNine's acquisition of LexisNexis' e-discovery suite and Catalyst's of TotalDiscovery. Epiq itself is no stranger to such a strategy, either. In May, the company announced its acquisition of Tokyo-based Ji2 , and in 2016, the company was bought out by DTI reported at $1 billion , leading to a merger between the two companies.