Bloomberg Industry Group has announced that the acquisition of Dashboard Legal, a project management and collaboration solution designed for law firms and in-house counsel. Like the majority of legal tech startups, Dashboard Legal by developed by a former ALM 100 attorney Mat Rotenberg, in a “there’s got to be a better way” moment.
I had a chance to talk with Rotenberg and Joe Breda, president Bloomberg Law. I was particularly fascinated to hear that Rotenberg had participated in large law “technology committees” which means not only felt the frustrations of of fragmented workflows as a practitioner, but understands the mechanics of legal tech decision making. Dashboard Legal was built to enable collaboration and to simplify and clarify workflows as well as maximize efficiency.
Dashboard Legal is positioned in the legal project management space. It provides team level, real-time visibility into the projects and tasks attorneys are responsible for executing. The acquisition expands Bloomberg Law’s presence within the legal workflow market, which it entered last year with the introduction of Bloomberg Law Contract Solutions, its AI-powered solution for storing, searching, drafting, and negotiating contracts. Although the founder was a transactional attorney the tools can be using across of wide spectrum of use cases including litigation projects.
Only two prior acquisitions. Bloomberg Law has done most of their development in-house. They have previously acquired only two other companies. The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) in 2011 and . Exemplify in 2016, the technology that underpins Bloomberg Law’s Draft Analyzer.
The BNA acquisition aligns well with the Dashboard Legal workflow tools. BNA brought Bloomberg a deep mine of secondary material including treatises, newsletters and practical guidance materials. I like to remind people that BNA was the first company in the U.S. to
identify the need for checklists, forms and practice tips which were published in their popular “portfolio” series for tax and corporate law. These have been moved online and expanded into the Practical Guidance centers on Bloomberg Law. These will be particularly powerful tools when integrated into Dashboard Legal.
Dashboard Legal does not require a subscription to Bloomberg Law. Although there will be benefits of having access to Bloomberg Law. For example, Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance tools including checklists and forms will be available from within Dashboard Legal.
What it does. Dashboard Legal was developed by attorneys to simplify task tracking, document management, and teamwide communication and collaboration, offering lawyers a more dynamic, organized way of working. Its key benefits include:
1. A birds-eye view of the state of all ongoing legal matters for those managing legal teams, supported by “client-ready” visual matter reporting.
2. The ability to track deadlines, assign tasks and visualize progress in real time within each dashboard.
3. State-of-the-art integrations with Outlook and key document management systems such as iManage and Netdocs.
4. Contextual notes and real-time communications tools such as chat embedded within each dashboard.
The introductory video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYXNjUqD1OQ
“The addition of Dashboard Legal’s powerful project management and collaboration software to our product lineup expands the breadth of our offerings, which enable attorneys to be more productive and efficient in conducting their most time-consuming everyday tasks,” said Joe Breda, president, Bloomberg Law. “This acquisition dovetails with our vision of building a suite of products that combine our subject-matter expertise with advanced technologies such as generative AI to support attorneys’ day-to-day workflow.”
“I’m honored and excited to be joining Bloomberg Law,” said Mat Rotenberg, co-founder and CEO of Dashboard Legal, who is joining the Bloomberg Law leadership team to oversee workflow product strategy. “Along with my co-founder Fedor Garin, we have a tremendous opportunity to fuel the next generation of legal workflow solutions. We are eager to get to work and take advantage of this unprecedented moment in legal technology.”
Future developments include building an AI chat bot to allow lawyers to query the documents in Legal Dashboard and the integration with Bloomberg Law Practical Guidance materials.
