QDiscovery is looking to bolster its bench as it acquires e-discovery provider Evidox, joining what has already been a crowded 2018 year for e-discovery M&A activity.

Evidox provides a host of e-discovery services, including preservation, collection, processing, hosting, production and presentation of electronic evidence. A large presence in the northeast particularly, Evidox has offices in Boston and Portland, Maine. The deal joins Evidox with QDiscovery, which is known for its full forensic analysis division and apps such as QPrivAlert and QMobile Insight.

The two companies will continue to operate under their own names post-deal, while making their combined services available for all clients. A QDiscovery press release said all Evidox employees will remain with the company, including CEO and co-founder Jim Berriman and chief strategy officer Dana Conneally. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Speaking with Legaltech News yesterday, QDiscovery CEO David Barrett said that acquiring Evidox was an opportunity to expand the New London, Connecticut-based QDiscovery's geographic and personnel scope. But when it comes to M&A, he said, the “number one thing that we are always evaluating is cultural fit.”

“Both of these organizations are laser-focused on client service, because the number one thing in our business—and I think folks sometimes forget about this—is that we are a service business,” Barrett said.

That view was echoed by Evidox's Conneally, who called client service “the cornerstone of the business” since the company originally opened in 2006

“Because our growth was so curated over the years and organic, we wanted to make sure that as we considered possible partners or being acquired, it had to be the fit that David described,” Conneally said. While he and Berriman were originally skeptical that the perfect fit was out there, “it became obvious that not only did it exist, but maybe fit better than we could have imagined.”

Both sides also noted their employees' depth of experience as a mutual attraction, with Evidox's representatives saying that keeping the team in tact was a key consideration in looking for a partner. Berriman added, “One thing that pleased us about QDiscovery as we got to know them is that they are old-school e-discovery. By that I don't mean that they're not modern, I mean that they came out of that same kind of client-centric, service-centric background that our clients need.”

Neither side expects many changes for either QDiscovery or Evidox customers outside of a deeper bench to call upon and, particularly for Evidox customers, new technologies to draw upon. Conneally noted that Evidox customers will now have for the first time access to a Relativity hosting platform as well as QDiscovery-developed technologies like QMobile text message processing.

“It's a technology that we had developed more ad hoc internal at Evidox … It's something that because our bench wasn't as deep as we'd like it to be, when that sort of request came in, we struggled to meet it,” Conneally explained concerning text message processing. “We provided some technology to help our clients, but as a combined entity, that's a good example of the type of offering” they can provide more easily.

The e-discovery M&A market has continued to be active as we move close to the end of 2018. In late October, Consilio announced the acquisition of DiscoverReady, while in September Nuix acquired Ringtail from FTI Consulting. 2018 has also seen CloudNine's acquisition of LexisNexis' e-discovery suite, Catalyst's acquisition of TotalDiscovery, and Epiq's acquisition of Garden City Group, among others.

For Barrett's part, he felt QDiscovery's turn in the e-discovery consolidation carousel strengthens what he views as a unique market position.

“The size that we are, we are able to respond to any project that's out there. … Yet we remain nimble enough to be able to move quickly, make good decisions, and stay laser-focused on client service,” Barrett said. “I think there's an advantage for a company of our size to perhaps be able to do that a bit easier.”