Technology

Litera Announces Aquisition Of Kira Systems

Kira will spin off a new company to serve corporate clients.

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A few weeks ago, I mused on the Legaltech Week Journalist Roundtable that we might be seeing the decline of the era of consolidation in legal tech and the rise of a new era of collaboration, where established players band together to cross-promote each other as independent solutions along a common workflow instead of merging into larger entities.

So, I was totally wrong about that.

This afternoon, Litera announced its 12th acquisition in the space, picking up Kira Systems, adding the latter’s AI contract analysis solution to Litera’s Transaction Management platform.

Litera CEO Avaneesh Marwaha said in a statement that the acquisition would “allow us to include advanced machine learning workflows into our Transaction Management platform. Providing lawyers with significantly expanded workflows to manage more aspects of the deal management process of higher quality. We are also incredibly impressed by the Kira team and leadership, whose expertise will be a strong addition to the Litera family. Overall, Kira enables us to provide total diligence for the transaction and deal management lifecycle.”

Workflow is very much the name of the game. Litera Global Director of Corporate Development Haley Altman told me, “We’re always looking at what problems our law firm clients want to have solved. We think about all of that when looking at what we plan to build or buy. When you think about the workflows around deals and multidocument contracts, the ability to understand what’s in those documents is why Kira is the perfect partner. We think it really fits into our ability to provide holistic workflows.”

And there’s a unique urgency for this kind of tool right now. “Deal teams all working in the same room room doesn’t exist” Altman said, describing a not unlikely result in the post-pandemic world. “How do you put together the tech and process and flow of data to do that in the most effective way possible. We can take all this data to figure out how to build the right teams.”

Kira carved out an honored place in the legal tech cosmos. Over the last 10 years, the company grew its customer base to include more than half the Am Law 100, 18 of the top 25 ranked M&A practices, and seven of the Vault 10. Kira CEO and co-founder Noah Waisberg said, “Litera is the perfect partner for Kira. They have a deep understanding of the legal market globally and share our vision that technology can transform the contract review process. Litera has achieved ubiquity in the legal market for its Drafting products. We believe this acquisition will ensure Kira achieves ubiquity in the due diligence review process, as well as provide a welcome home for our customers and
employees.”

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On the other side of this deal, Waisberg and fellow Kira co-founder and CTO Dr. Alexander Hudek will launch a new company named Zuva to continue Kira’s work on the corporate side. Waisberg told me that recently Kira has served both ends of the market. “We decided that splitting this in half is better…. If we hand this business off to Litera they can be a good home for our customers and could bring this business to ubiquity. We could get a return that shareholders feel good about. But also go off and pursue this other business.”

In a nod to the nature of this deal, the new business is named Zuva because it’s a rough translation of Kira. The legacy company’s name meant “ray of light,” while the new name comes from Shona and means “a place where the beams of the sun fall” often in association with the “first light falling at the beginning of a day.” A similar concept but a new context and a new beginning.

“Zuva is stunning opportunity that exists at this moment. No one else can meet the moment the way we can with our team,” Waisberg said.

A monumental deal for 2021.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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