Mergers and Acquisitions

When e-discovery company Exterro received its first institutional investor in May 2018, CEO and president Bobby Balachandran said he saw “a lot of really good opportunities in the market to provide even more value to our customers sooner than if we built it on our own.” One of the first of those opportunities has come to bear—and perhaps surprisingly, outside of e-discovery.

Exterro announced on Tuesday the acquisition of data privacy and information management software company Jordan Lawrence. With a particular focus on data inventory, minimization and governance, Jordan Lawrence in 2018 was named the Association of Corporate Counsel's exclusive Alliance Partner for data privacy and cybersecurity compliance.

No financial details for the transaction have been disclosed. Jordan Lawrence's employees have been absorbed into Exterro, and the two companies' respective software have begun to be integrated. Jordan Lawrence is expected to keep its own branding for the immediate future, as the company's website has been rebranded to say “Jordan Lawrence: An Exterro Company.”

Speaking with Legaltech News Tuesday, Balachandran noted that both the e-discovery industry and the economy at large are “facing large-scale, structural change in how we interact with our data,” and the wish to be at the forefront of that change was behind the acquisition.

“I believe e-discovery needs to reckon with the changing landscape of data privacy regulations. GDPR is just the tip of the spear,” he said. “The California Consumer Protection Act, the New York Department of Financial Services Cybersecurity Regulation, and likely many more state regulations are on their way. Legal teams must make sure their e-discovery preservation and information governance programs comply with these regulations, or they will be opening their organization up to layers upon layers of lawsuits.”

In the press release announcing the deal, Exterro noted that the companies' combined software will be expected to access, identify, and locate all responsive data; assess, inventory and map their data; manage, preserve, remove, collect or make portable their data; and document and manage the workflows associated with their data responsibilities and requirements.

Balachandran called Jordan Lawrence's software a “perfect complement” to Exterro's existing solution, noting that many e-discovery and privacy tasks are “for all intents and purposes, identical. Both require an accurate and comprehensive data map, the ability to identify and preserve data across a wide variety of data sources, and the ability to review, redact, and produce relevant data under tight timelines.”

In the release announcing the deal, Alice Lawrence, principal at Jordan Lawrence, also pointed to the wide options available at Exterro as a catalyst for the deal. She explained, “One of the reasons we are thrilled to be a part of Exterro is having access to their large, innovative development organization. Our joint clients will benefit from a software platform that unites data inventory, e-discovery, and information governance solutions in one place.”

Pre-existing Jordan Lawrence customers will now have access to wider Exterro e-discovery capabilities. Balachandran pointed out in particular that Jordan Lawrence legal hold customers will be migrated to Exterro's legal hold platform. And the combination, he said, should be more than “a simple bolt-on acquisition.”

“Organizations will need a portal for data subject access requests, but that's just the front end,” he explained. “More importantly, they need a holistic information governance plan to understand the data in a contextual manner, and the ability to preserve, collect, review, redact, produce or remediate information—all on demand, in an efficient business process.  And that's where Exterro fits into the picture.”