Law Company Elevate Buys Sumati Managed Services Group, As Expansion Continues

Law company Elevate today announced the acquisition of Sumati Group, a leading provider of contract lifecycle management (CLM) managed services.

The move expands Elevate’s existing contracts support capabilities globally with over 200 Sumati lawyers and technologists providing contract review and analysis.

The deal also adds Sumati’s proprietary software for contract review and analysis to Elevate’s technology arsenal, which was recently expanded by Elevate’s acquisition of enterprise legal AI technology and consulting firm LexPredict.

John Croft, co-founder of Elevate, told Artificial Lawyer: ‘This is just one of several other acquisitions to come in the months ahead.’

This latest move indicates that Elevate, which describes itself as a law company, as opposed to an ‘Alternative Legal Services Provider’, is on the move and seeking to use its rapid rise in revenue in recent years to buy up synergistic businesses that will help to grow the overall platform.

Adding Sumati doesn’t just increase its human capability, which helps, but also adds new tech to Elevate’s stable of applications, which the company calls its ‘tech arsenal’ – which is a great term, AL has to say.

When seen in the context of the LexPredict deal we can see that Elevate’s goal is to put technology front and centre of its business, as that will be a key way that it can compete against other players in the same space, as well as take the battle to some law firms that have built out large process arms.

Kunoor Chopra, VP of Legal Services at Elevate, added: ‘The combination with Sumati provides us additional capabilities and capacity to meet growing customer demand for contracts support solutions across the contract lifecycle continuum.’

Prashant Dubey, President and CEO of Sumati, said: ‘Merging with Elevate achieves our long-standing goal of being part of a world-class platform and team that can leverage [our] expertise.’

And Pawan Kumar, Sumati’s Chief Operating Officer, concluded: ‘Joining forces with Elevate enables our specialised team to bring broader capabilities offered by Elevate to our customers, such as contracts consulting and several adjacent technology-enabled managed services.’

Sumati is known as a leading provider of contract analysis, review and migration and contract lifecycle management technology managed services.

Providing support across all industries, contract types and CLM platforms, over 200 Sumati lawyers and technologists have worked on over six million contract documents, the company said.

Sumati is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with a legal and technology operations centre in Chandigarh, India.