BigHand Looks to Push Into Corporate Legal with PayneGroup Acquisition
BigHand has acquired metadata solutions provider PayneGroup, in a move designed in part to appeal to in-house legal departments looking to cut costs by bringing tools traditionally leveraged by law firms in-house.
November 22, 2019 at 07:00 AM
3 minute read
On Tuesday, software provider BigHand announced that it had acquired PayneGroup, Inc., a company known for its metadata extraction solutions.
The acquisition comes as BigHand looks to capitalize on a trend that sees corporate legal departments bringing more work in-house in an effort to cut costs, a process which may include implementing solutions that can scrub compliance-busting metadata from documents.
"As more and more corporations are taking more and more work back in-house, they are looking more often for technology that the law firms deploy to help them be more efficient and protect security, and so we see that as a growing market as well," said Eric Wangler, president of BigHand North America.
What the PayneGroup acquisition brings to that objective is a deep pocket of metadata management solutions. The company's Metadata Assistant solution, for example, was designed to reduce the risk of accidental discovery by removing embedded metadata from various content ranging from Word or Excel documents to video and graphics.
Wangler is banking on that expertise traveling well. As of Thursday, all PayneGroup employees will be folded into BigHand, while CEO Donna Payne will be stepping away from the business.
In a press release, Payne said she was passing the company onto BigHand after deciding to pursue the next chapter in her career.
"Their reputation, infrastructure and experience reassure me that I am passing the business on to capable hands who can take the company to the next level," Payne said.
In addition to some new blood, BigHand will also be able to add the PayneGroup's existing suite of metadata products to its portfolio, complimenting pre-existing offerings such as BigHand Scrub or template management tool BigHand Create.
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