Earlier this week, legal technology company Technology Concepts & Design, Inc. (TCDI) announced that it had received a growth investment from private equity company Trivest Partners, LP. While the amount of capital involved was not disclosed, the investment comes as TCDI looks to continue leveling up the size of its legal industry footprint, which spans disciplines such as e-discovery, litigation case management, computer forensics and cybersecurity.
“Trivest’s experience with non-control, growth investments in founder-owned businesses made them an ideal partner for us. We are confident that this partnership will propel us in our path forward, specifically in regards to further developing our product base,” said TCDI founder and CEO Bill Johnson in a news release announcing the investment.
Prior to the Trivest investment, TCDI was already taking steps towards expanding its scale beyond the company’s initial focus on litigation tech services. The company acquired JURRINOV Ltd., an e-discovery and data security provider, back in May 2016, which allowed it to expand both its range of offerings to include data privacy, on-site data collections, cybersecurity and computer forensics. “This acquisition gives us the opportunity to provide cybersecurity solutions as a stand-alone service,” Johnson said in a news release.
In the intervening years, the company has continued to roll out new managed security services like 2018′s CyberPulse 365 while revamping existing e-discovery solutions like ClarVergence into a proprietary integrated platform called CVLynx. Tuesday’s news release stresses that TCDI is looking to continue “adapting their product and service solutions to meet the ever-evolving market changes”—an objective in which the Trivest investment is expected to play a key role.
The equity company’s investment portfolio encompasses a wide range of industries, including entities like Columbus Recycling, Innovative Foodservice and the staffing agency PeopleShare. However, the legal tech market isn’t entirely foreign terrain to Trivest, which entered into an investment partnership with Advanced Discovery in 2014. That arrangement came to end in 2018 when Advanced Discovery merged with fellow e-discovery provider Consilio, but Trivest principal Amir Mirheydar indicated that the investor still sees potential in legal tech.
“There’s just so much business that can be captured. … The amount of legal work, litigation work out there continues to grow. We’re a very litigious society, and I think anything that can help streamline the process is going to be desired, is going to be consumed down the road,” Mirheydar said.
As for why TCDI in particular caught Trivest’s attention, Mirheydar pointed to the appeal that the company’s proprietary platforms and services in remote document review—which allows users to outsource document review to attorneys stationed throughout the U.S.—hold for costumers. “There are some real marquee, blue chip Fortune 500-type customers that are signing up for that,” he said.
Meanwhile TCDI appears poised to continue expanding, something the news release hinted would be accomplished through a combination of “acquisition and organic growth.” At least some part of that effort is already in motion: Last October, the company hired law firm and discovery provider veteran Denise Bach as senior director of legal services, with the targeted goal of strengthening TCDI’s growth in the Midwest.
It’s worth noting that TCDI isn’t the only company offering e-discovery services that’s looking to grow in stature, especially as consumers of legal services begin to favor more of a platform-centric approach to solutions. For instance, KLDiscovery’s January announcement that it had acquired Superior Document Services Inc. came less than a year after made its purchases of Strategic Legal Solutions and Compiled public in July 2019. The same month, Xact Data Discovery acquired Discovery with an eye towards bolstering its presence in the Midwest and East Coast.
