Legaltech News and Corporate Counsel released “May is for M&A, but Where Does It Leave e-Discovery Staffing?” featuring insights from TRU Staffing Partners’ new Vice President of Business Development and e-discovery industry veteran, Pete Smith. In this interview, Smith gives his vantage point on e-discovery’s major staffing changes, his new role with TRU Staffing Partners, what vast e-discovery M&A means for companies and their employees, and more.
May has been the month of M&A in e-discovery. It started off with a bang, with Morae Legal and e-discovery provider Clutch Group announcing that the two companies would be merging. Soon after, Xact Data Discovery revealed it was acquiring F1 Discovery, Lighthouse eDiscovery announced it was acquiring fellow discovery company Discovia, and Advanced Discovery acquired fellow discovery company Altep. And that’s not even counting new investments, like Zapproved announced during the month.
These deals have resulted in not only questions from customers about how technologies will change and integrate, but also from company employees about their new roles in a combined enterprise. And few people know about these questions more than Pete Smith—during his years in legal technology at companies like Xerox, Quorum, First Advantage/Consilio, TechLaw/UBIC and others, Smith has worked on the business development side of more than a dozen acquisitions.
Earlier this week, Smith announced that he would be joining TRU Staffing Partners, where he has been named vice president of business development for the legal technology-centric contract staffing and executive placement search firm. With the move and the recent spate of e-discovery M&A, Legaltech News caught up with Smith about the recent changes in e-discovery and what it means for both the companies involved and their employees. To read the full article, click here.