I just received word from our Lexis rep today that they are acquiring Dataflight, the makers of Concordance. This is the latest, in a string, of acquisitions by Lexis to provide total practice management solutions to the legal community. I'm still not convinced that the legal market is better or worse off by the acquisitions of Lexis and West. Take for example InterAction, which was purchased by Lexis. They've had the product now for over a year and still haven't gotten their 'content enabled' CRM system, which purports to integrate InterAction with content from the Lexis 'Company Dossier' product, off the ground. Then look at Prolaw's docketing application, which was purchased by West. We're now told that they are throttling back support of this program (docketing, not the entire Prolaw package), leaving Compulaw with little competition.
The marketplace does not thrive without a bit of competition, and in my humble opinion, the acquisitions taking place aren't helping drive innovation, simply limiting our choices. Perhaps Lexis will somehow be able to leverage their Applied Discovery unit for the greater good of Concordance clients? I guess we'll all have to stand by and see what happens.
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