Well more than two-score providers of matter management systems

In mid-2011, at least twenty companies have licensed software to more than a handful of U.S. law department to help them manage matter information. Allegient, BottomLine, Bridgeway, CSC, CTTyMetrix, Datacert, doeLegal, EAG, Legalbill, LexisNexis, LawBase, LT Online, Mitratech, TrialNet, and Serengeti (acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2011) (See my post of Feb. 25, 2009: eight matter management systems at LegalTech New York.).

A post five years ago listed most of them (See my post of July 14, 2006: names 11 companies that offered matter management systems.). An ILTA survey in 2009 included in this niche Practice Manager Group and Legal Files. In truth, it is hard to draw a line around “matter management systems” (See my post of July 16, 2011: difficulty delineating genre.).

Hyperion Research group has published an overview of the cottage industry and its current inhabitants (See my post of Feb. 23, 2011: strengths of Hyperion’s report; and Feb. 24, 2011: predicts entrance into the market of enterprise application vendors.). A recent report brought home that difficulty (See my post of March 6, 2011: Hyperion Research describes a dozen vendors of matter management systems.). Other posts on this blog have identified candidates in this domain (See my post of Feb. 15, 2009: LegalMaster site lists Legal Bill Review, LRI (Legal Review, Inc.), ELF, LAS (Law Audit Services), Visibility, Legalgard Litigation Advisor, ValidZone and Direct Invoice, BES, Direct Commerce, Petersen, and Stuart, Maue, Mitchell & James.).

At least 29 packages were mentioned by one or more law departments in my global benchmark survey in addition to those mentioned above, notably SharePoint, Pro-Link, Tedesco and Smart Counsel (See my post of March 12, 2011: early look at matter management systems based on 142 participants; and June 13, 2011: vendors mentioned in General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey at close to the 300 participant mark.).

This particular cottage industry has more rooms than the Tombs (as they used to say when I was in John Jay while at Columbia Law School).