On Monday, Clio, a 17-year-old Canadian law firm for software management, announced that it agreed to obtain VLEX, a 26-year legal data smart platform, in $ 1 billion monetary and stock agreements.
The announcement comes about a year after the massive financial circle of Clio, which almost doubled the Vancouver, the $ 1.6 billion British Columbia estimate in $ 2021 to $ 3 billion.
VLEX, who was mostly exclaimed until it was purchased by private equity firm Oakley Capital in 2022, was highly sought after, according to Jack Newton, CEO and founder of Clio.
Harvey, the AI-Denaska Legal Te Technika starting, tried to buy VLEX a year ago, but the acquisition did not get together, As reported by the information Last July.
VLEX is a valuable property because its database of legal documents can greatly improve AI models for lawyers.
“Data is one of the only long -term defensible competitive ditches that a company can have in space,” Newton told Techcrunch.
VLEX competes with the legal database of Thomson Reuters and Lexisnexis. The acquisition comes shortly after Harvey announced Partnership with lexisnexisaiming to enrich Harvey’s AI with Lexisnexis data.
With the acquisition of VLEX, Clio, which provides lawyer companies with time tracking, billing and electronic payment tools, now effectively steps into the practice of law itself.
Over the last few years, VLEX has built Vincent, AI model built on top of the company’s legal content database.
“AI will immediately push a convergence on what has historically been separate categories of software: the trade of law and practice of law,” Newton said. He added that Clio’s clients in the small and medium law segment will now have access to Vincent’s AI -skills.
In addition to announcing plans to get VLEX, Clio said it reached $ 300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
