Electronic Discovery illustration

Xact Data Discovery is extending its reach out west. The company recently announced that it had acquired elements of QUiVX, an e-discovery service based out of Walnut Creek, California.

Here are the particulars: Xact will absorb QUiVX's review, forensics and e-discovery segments, while its paper discovery business will continue to operate as a separate entity.

According to David Moran, Xact's chief operating officer, the decision to acquire QUiVX came down to scale. Xact already has 15 branch offices in cities across the country, but its reach out west doesn't extend much further than Salt Lake City, Utah.

The acquisition of QUiVX's electronic components will allow the company to push into California's Bay Area.

“They're fairly small compared to the size of Xact, yet I think they've got very, very strong client relationships in that west corridor,” Moran said.

On the technology front, QUiVX's portfolio of solutions includes technology assisted review, email threading (which identifies the most comprehensive link in an email chain) and an analytics tool that groups documents together by concept.

Xact already offers forensic, processing and managed review services, but Moran said the QUiVX products will be incorporated as needed and could benefit from the Xact platform's advanced processing power and hosting speed.

“Even though they're smaller, if they've got technology or processes that we think can strengthen us, we're going to bring those on board and take a best-of-both approach,” Moran said.

Once the dust settles with QUiVX, Xact will continue to look for new ways to expand its scale. Moran is shooting for a modest to aggressive growth rate over the next four or five years that includes more acquisitions. Organizations with a legal process outsourcing bent or some ties overseas are of particular interest.

“Probably a likely future candidate would be a little bit of international expenditure, probably into Western Europe,” Moran said.