The past six months have brought a flurry of investments and acquisitions involving law practice management software. Now there is another acquisition to report.
AbacusNext, one of the leading providers of legal, accounting and compliance software for legal professionals, has been acquired by Thomas H. Lee Partners, a private equity firm that invests in growth companies.
AbacusNext CEO Scott Johnson will continue to lead the company and other members of the senior management team will also stay on, the announcement said.
Products owned by AbacusNext include AbacusLaw, Amicus Attorney, Amicus Cloud, and the document automation software HotDocs.
In October, I wrote about the spate of acquisitions involving law practice management software, with four notable acquisitions or investments. In a post at Above the Law, I speculated that the pandemic was a factor in driving these acquisitions, as it has driven more lawyers to the cloud and to the solutions that cloud-based practice management platforms provide.
This spate of activity included:
- The news on Sept. 8 that the practice management platform MyCase has been sold by its owner, AppFolio, to the private equity firm Apax Partners for a whopping $193 million in cash.
- On Sept. 22, I reported on my LawSites blog that ASG LegalTech, the company that had already acquired the cloud practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, had acquired Headnote, the online payments platform that provides e-payments and accounts-receivable management for law firms.
- On Sept. 24 came the news that ProfitSolv had acquired Rocket Matter, on top of its recent acquisition of TimeSolv.
- On Oct. 6, Actionstep, a cloud-based practice management system founded in New Zealand and with a significant presence in the U.S., announced that it had received an investment from Serent Capital, a San Francisco private equity firm.
“We are excited to partner with THL, who offers deep expertise in practice management software and payment processing and shares our commitment to driving AbacusNext’s next chapter of growth,” Johnson said in a prepared statement.
“This partnership with THL will enable us to accelerate our investment in innovative SaaS products with integrated payment processing, allowing us to continue to offer a market-leading software suite.”
THL said the investment was driven by the shift to cloud-based software, which it said has accelerated in the current “work from home” environment.
