It has been on the cards for years, now it has finally happened
Ambrogi reports
In a deal that will reshape the legal research and legal technology landscape on a global basis and threaten the longstanding “Wexis” legal research duopoly, the companies vLex and Fastcase today announced that they have merged into a single entity that they say will have the world’s largest subscriber base of lawyers and law firms and a legal research library of more than 1 billion documents from more than 100 countries.
As part of the merger, Oakley Capital, a major European private equity investor, which last September acquired majority ownership of vLex, and Bain Capital Credit, a global credit specialist with some $42 billion in assets under management, are investing an undisclosed amount in the combined business to expand its global reach and accelerate its development of artificial intelligence tools for the legal market.
Lluís Faus will become global CEO.
The combined entity will be called vLex Group and will be led by Lluís Faus as global CEO. Faus was cofounder of vLex in Barcelona in 2000 and had been its CEO ever since. It will maintain headquarters in Washington, D.C., Miami and Barcelona.
The two founders of Fastcase, CEO Ed Walters and President Phil Rosenthal, who started their company in 1999, will remain with the company in global executive roles and take seats on the merged company’s board, together with Faus and his cofounder and brother Angel Faus, who is CTO of vLex.
Unique Global Breadth
vLex has been unique among legal research services for its breadth of international coverage. It provides access to comprehensive primary and secondary law collections from more than 100 countries.
The company told me last year that its collection of case law, legislation, journals and dockets serves over 2 million users across Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, and the Americas.
Its platform includes Vincent, an AI-powered legal research assistant that analyzes legal documents that users upload and finds relevant search results. It works in both English and Spanish.
In 2019, vLex acquired Justis Publishing Ltd., a 33-year-old UK legal publisher with clients in more than 40 countries including the UK, Ireland, the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.
Historically, vLex has not had as strong a foothold in the United States, but in recent years, it has been driving to expand its growth here, particularly since its acquisition by Oakley last September. Just last week, vLex had announced a partnership with the American Bar Association to offer access to materials from the ABA’s Antitrust Law Section.
For U.S. primary legal research materials, vLex originally partnered with the legal research service Casemaker to obtain U.S. case law and other materials. After Fastcase acquired Casemaker in 2021, vLex partnered with Fastcase for U.S. primary law.
As for Fastcase, it claims to have a subscriber base in the U.S. of more than 1 million lawyers, or more than three-quarters of all lawyers in the United States. In significant part, it has built this subscriber base through its partnerships with state and local bar associations as a preferred member benefit.
Originally a legal research company, Fastcase has diversified in recent years, launching its Full Court Press publishing arm and acquiring Docket Alarm and Law Street Media in 2018, NextChapter in 2019, and the technology and team of Judicata in 2020.
Jean O’Grady reports as well
