Quantum Discovery, a specialist in providing e-Discovery services to the legal industry, is acquiring Indiana-based litigation support services provider Preferred Imaging. The company says this purchase expands its national scope and also “solidifies” its Midwestern position.

Quantum leverages the Viewpoint e-discovery platform from Lateral Data (a subsidiary of Xerox) to provide hosted management services for legal professionals’ e-discovery activities. Viewpoint enables data relating to lawsuits and other legal activities from sources including social media, email, PCs and databases to be collected, processed, analyzed, reviewed and stored.

In addition, Viewpoint enables the integration of data from disparate sources. It includes the Viewpoint Assisted Review tool that automates many attorney review activities.

Quantum Has Some Big Competition

Quantum strictly provides e-discovery technology and services, which of course offers its own slate of advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, as a specialist Quantum can offer deep domain knowledge and with its singular focus can offer clients a high degree of attention they may not get from all vendors. On the minus side, there are some very big names with very wide and deep client bases that also participate in e-discovery and offer economies of scale as well as familiarity.

One of these large competitors is HP, which last week integrated the HP Application Information Optimizer with the e-discovery software of its subsidiary Autonomy. Thus the application will not only be able to ingest data into the e-discovery software, but also review structured data too.

HP has also announced that it has extended Autonomy’s Meaning Based Coding (MBC) capabilities to its Early Case Assessment module, using the contextual abilities again to identify early, key issues in the process, as well as the release of a new, fully integrated native discovery module.

Other major technology vendors offering e-discovery software and services include IBM and Microsoft.

Thumbnail image for lateral-viewpoint.pngQuantum's Viewpoint Project Management Solution

Quantum May Continue Shopping Spree

Getting a little bigger by purchasing Preferred Imaging in the face of this competition is probably a good idea. And Quantum may not be done growing through acquisition, either. Corporate executives told The Connecticut Day (Quantum is headquartered in New London, CT) that the company may make more “strategic acquisitions,” including potential expansion to the West Coast, though it wants to maintain the feel of a “boutique operation.”

Of course, Quantum obviously needs to compete on more than size alone considering what it is up against.

The Preferred Imaging management team and all employees will remain with the company. Offices will continue to be located in Indianapolis. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.