Thomson Reuters

Last week, Thomson Reuters announced it had acquired the secure file-sharing and collaboration platform HighQ. The move comes just a little over three months since the company sold its legal managed service business Pangea3 to EY in favor of doubling down on its content and software business.

So why the sudden change in direction? One of the primary reasons is Thomson Reuters' desire to alter its relationship to the Big Four, transitioning from competitors to something potentially more lucrative now that the company is no longer operating in the domain of legal managed services.

“A number of the Big Four are existing customers of Thomson Reuters and of HighQ. I hope I would see the future of us becoming more important suppliers now of those businesses but without the burden of the confusion that we were both competitor and supplier,” said Jim Leason, Thomson Reuters' VP of customer proposition lead, legal professionals for Europe.

To be sure, Big Four members such as EY have made no secret of their desire to stake a serious claim in the legal managed services business. Aside from its acquisition of Pangea3, the company also took over alternative services provider Riverview Law last August.

Cornelius Grossman, EY's global law leader, told Legaltech News that the company has no plans to slow down. “We have delivery centers around the globe, so we will be able to deliver 24/7 on legal managed services. So we have all the assets together for scaled engagement, and that was always the plan and that what's we're going to pursue further,” Grossman said.

On the other hand, Thomson Reuters is envisioning a future as “independent platform providers,” Leason noted.

The addition of HighQ to the ranks would seem to fit that bill, filling out Thompson Reuters' repertoire of cloud-based software offerings while also folding some additional development talent into the organization. Plus, there's an opportunity to address the ongoing drive among law firms and legal departments to maximize efficiency.

“The other thing that's behind this acquisition is a desire to have a much broader open platform around productivity suites. This where we see HighQ as being that kind of foundation platform where we can reverse integrate the productivity solutions that we've got into the HighQ platform,” Leason said.

He pointed out that a large number of legal tech vendors that have emerged in the marketplace over the last three or four years, bringing with them a variety of point solutions that law firms or legal departments can deploy. However, moving between all of those solutions can be cumbersome, which is why HighQ will remain open to allow clients to more easily integrate solutions as needed.

“We're trying to fold some of this pain that they have now from having to move from one product to the next product to the next product. … That right now is a big pain point,” said Ajay Patel, founder of HighQ.