As the legal world increasingly moves to the cloud, SAGlobal is looking to leverage its history with Microsoft's Dynamics 365 to promote its Legal360 offerings as a major legal industry player. In that quest, it has now added a known business management suite to its fold to offer what it calls a “full spectrum of best-in-class cloud-based solutions.”

On January 18, SAGlobal announced the acquisition of ERP and practice management solution LexisOne from LexisNexis, which will be folded into the Legal360 Practice Management Suite after a period of roughly six months. LexisOne provides practice management, time and billing, accounting, and human resource management capabilities.

The transaction is expected to close in Q1, and financial details have not been publicly disclosed. The acquisition was first reported by the UK's Legal IT Insider.

SAGlobal merged with 360 Vertical Solutions, whose products include Legal360, in July 2018. Whit McIsaac, who was formerly president and CEO of 360 Vertical Solutions and is now CEO of SAGlobal Americas, told Legaltech News that the LexisOne acquisition is part of an ongoing goal at the company to provide a one-stop-shop for the business needs of attorneys. He noted that now, the Legal360 suite includes time and billing, finance and accounting, CRM, marketing, relationship intelligence, talent management and business intelligence.

“There are very few players in the law technology marketplace that have this depth of solutions and are already deploying these solutions on a global perspective,” McIsaac said. “We feel that the future is very exciting.”

McIsaac noted that he does not expect any changes for current LexisOne customers in terms of pricing or subscription model. “Quite the contrary, we expect to be able to offer a larger variety of extended products and services to the existing clients, as well as a much more comprehensive set of solutions to the legal marketplace,” he said.

He also explained that existing LexisOne customers that do not have Legal360 will not have to purchase the full Legal360 suite to continue with their existing solutions. The opportunity to extend their subscription, though, will be possible with “significant concessions available to the LexisOne client base.”

Integrating a solution already working off the Microsoft cloud was an important consideration for the deal, McIsaac noted, as SAGlobal is “100 percent focused and committed to the Microsoft Cloud platform.” For those law firms skeptical of moving to the cloud, he believes that SAGlobal having a close relationship to Microsoft—the company claims to be one the top ten cloud suppliers for Microsoft worldwide—should be a positive that can aid user adoption and assuage risks.

“The fact that Microsoft has invested so heavily in their cloud strategy and that they have done such an effective job of communicating the benefits of the cloud (including security benefits) to law firms and law firm clients is a huge advantage to SAGlobal,” McIsaac explained. “Having Microsoft handle all the heavy-lifting for these cloud migrations is huge—all we are doing is making the Dynamics 365 solutions work for law firms and other professional services groups.”