Among the most enduring yet dramatic success stories in legal tech is that of iManage, the document and email management company. Founded in 1995, its collaborative approach to content management made it popular among among law firms virtually out of the gate, and it was acquired eight years later for $171 million by Interwoven.
But after Autonomy gobbled up Interwoven in 2009 and then Hewlett Packard bought Autonomy in 2011, the deal turned into a disaster when allegations that Autonomy had inflated its value resulted in HP having to write off nearly $8.8 billion of the $11.1 billion purchase price and years of litigation that continues even now.
With iManage, through no fault of its own, caught up in this M&A morass, its original founding management team, led by Neil Araujo and Rafiq Mohammadi, swooped in and bought back the company in 2015 and immediately went to work to put it back on course. Within a year, the company launched its native cloud platform, iManage Cloud, and then went on to make several key acquisitions, including of UK artificial intelligence company RAVN Systems in 2017 and of legal transaction management company Closing Folders in 2020.
Last year, after taking a minority strategic growth investment from Bain Capital, the company launched iManage AI, an AI search engine built natively into its cloud platform, and then iManage Tracker, a matter-centric task management service.
Related video: How It Works: iManage Tracker.
Now, iManage is revealing new details on the fruits of those labors and how they have translated to continued growth, and it is laying out its plans for the year ahead to further innovate its platform through development of AI and to further expand its partnerships and integrations with technology providers, including Microsoft.
Growth of iManage Cloud
During 2023, iManage added more than 300 new companies and law firms as customers, bringing its total global customer base to 4,000 customers across six continents — an increase of 1,000 customers over the number it reported when it bought the company back from HP in 2015.
Among its customers are more than 40% of Fortune 100 companies, 80% of the Am Law 100, major accounting and financial institutions throughout the world, and thousands of smaller, boutique customers, it says.
Related video: How It Works: iManage Closing Folders.
Driving that growth has been a continued shift to iManage Cloud, the company says. Annual recurring revenue for iManage Cloud grew 36% year over year, and over 60% of the iManage customer base – or some 2,400 customers – now work in iManage Cloud.
All of that adds up to more than 11 billion documents and 11 petabytes of data handled in iManage for more than 430,000 users.
Expand AI, Grow Partnerships
Having adopted the tagline, “Making Knowledge Work,” iManage says that over the next year it will emphasize significant innovation around its iManage knowledge work platform, including advanced AI services and capabilities across the platform.
“iManage will deliver powerful new capabilities leveraging generative AI for solutions like information retrieval, contract summarization, and email management – saving busy professionals time and enhancing productivity,” the company said.
Also over the next year, iManage plans to devote significant energy to partnerships. This includes continuing to build on its already established “better together” partnership with Microsoft, which includes significant improvements to its integration with Microsoft 365, native desktop co-authoring, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Co-pilot.
In addition, it said that its integration with ServiceNow and partnerships across a technology ecosystem of more than 200 partners will play a key role in expanding its footprint within law firms and legal departments.
Araujo, in a statement, said that 2023 was a remarkable year for iManage, and that its partnership with Bain Capital “helped propel the evolution of our modern, cloud native knowledge work platform, allowing us to better address our customers’ needs even as the knowledge work industry evolves at an unprecedented pace.
“As 2024 unfolds,” he said, “our dedication to people, innovation, and operational maturity remains steadfast, and we look forward to another year filled with fresh avenues for growth and opportunity.”
Learn more about iManage on the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.
