Legal directory site Avvo has been acquired by Internet Brands  — one of the world’s largest operators of websites, including Nolo, Lawyers.com, and Martindale-Hubbell While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Avvo CEO Mark Britton told GeekWire that they received “a big, fair price” for the company. Britton, the former general counsel at Expedia, also compared the deal to the historic relationship between Expedia and holding company IAC. In the early 2000s, IAC owned Expedia and a number of other travel-oriented brands. Avvo raised $71.5 million in venture funding three years ago, when  Bloomberg News pegged the company’s valuation at about $650 million. Dan Lear, Director of Industry Relations at Avvo says the company will stick to its mission to “change the way lawyers do business.”

Excited to announce that @Avvo has decided to join forces with Internet Brands (@martindalenolo & others). Excited to keep helping change the way lawyers do business with a whole new set of partners! https://t.co/dTOpdDqzgl

— Dan Lear (@rightbrainlaw) January 11, 2018

More investment and Consolidation

Consolidation continued as legal research platform, Fastcase announced that it has acquired Docket Alarm, a company that mines federal and state court dockets to provide litigation alerts and case-prediction analytics. Former lawyer, Michael Sander, created Docket Alarm, providing legal search, analytics and litigation alerts for the United States court system.

Not to be outdone, Apttus received undisclosed investment from IBM which joined multiple investors in the company’s Series E funding. The contract life cycle management solution, partly designed to overhaul how sales and legal interact, will use this investment to further its plan to deliver AI-based business solutions.

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The “Kodak” Moment for Law firms

The 2018 Report On The State Of The Legal Market (by George Town Law and the Legal Executive Institute) is out, and the verdict is not great for law firms. In The Global Post, Wayne Ramsay, Chief Strategy Officer at Exigent said: “A bit like Kodak in the race to digital photography, law firms cling on to the comforting old ways of the billable hour, worried innovation will cannibalize their source of revenues.”

Ken Grady, who writes on people, processes and technology in law, provides a similar damning verdict. He says: “This is an industry that peaked and will not return to any semblance of former financial glory.” Looking at the failure of some lawyers to take action-including on technology, he says: “You sacrifice your future when you can’t talk the talk of senior executives and play a strategic role at the top and throughout an organization.” Ron Friedmann, in Prism Legal adds: “These findings differ little from last year. Perhaps I am projecting, but I detect a sense of desperation in the report that law firms have yet to change how they work.”

In The Recorder, report author James Jones says: “I think that law firms can have a real competitive advantage and be significantly successful if they will only do some of this basic stuff.” Justin G. Castillo, Head of Legal at BT Americas, argued there is now more alternatives to law firms and with the exception of high-value work (high-value M&A and Litigation), General Counsel can handle work previously handled by law firms using LegalTech and LPOs”.

https://twitter.com/telecomattorney/status/951451989656948736

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Big Four Knocking on Law’s Door

Further disruption news is reported in The American Lawyer where Roy Strom reports that Deloitte announced it would be the last of the Big Four to effectively launch a law firm in the U.K, with an alternative business services license. In the Financial Times, Deloitte also signaled their intention to invest in AI as they seek to win market share for basic legal work from traditional law firms.