Spencer Trask & Co. Venture Fastcase Merges with Legal Intelligence Platform vLex

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Apr 04, 2023, 11:22 ET

Deal for Cash and Stock Organized by Oakley Capital

NEW YORK, April 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced technology development firm Spencer Trask & Co. today announced the merger of Fastcase with vLex in a transaction funded by private equity firms Bain Capital and Oakley Capital. The new venture provides a combined 3.8 million users in over 100 countries with smart access to the most extensive collection of legal and regulatory information in the world.

Spencer Trask & Co. was the first institutional investor in Fastcase and its largest shareholder.
"We are really proud to see Fastcase take its mission to the global stage," said Spencer Trask & Co. Chairman, Kevin Kimberlin.

The flagship Fastcase service extracts value from the entire corpus of U.S. law – from all 50 states, all Federal and appellate courts, the U.S. Code, the Federal Register from inception, and the Congressional Record volumes in their entirety. The firm provides highly accurate methods for researching these millions of pages of legal documents with predictive analytics and AI-enhanced smart tools. This provides analysis unavailable elsewhere such as case-prediction indicators on judges, venues, adversaries, and attorneys, and measures of gender diversity at law firms.

Revenues in the global legal services industry reached $900 billion in 2022 and yet the legal field has been slow to adopt technologies that are standard fare for financial, retail, and information service providers.

"Artificial intelligence and data analytics technology, used routinely elsewhere, will be demanded by discerning legal clients in the future," said Ed Walters, Fastcase co-founder and CEO. "So Fastcase combined these must-have analytics with the largest law library in the world."

For its technology backbone, Fastcase acquired legal search firm Judicata, funded by Khosla Ventures and Peter Thiel, and run by Blake Masters, now COO of Thiel Ventures. The Judicata senior team remained with Fastcase.

"From the beginning, Spencer Trask supported our mission to democratize the law in the United States. vLex is the perfect partner to scale this mission globally," concluded Walters.

About Spencer Trask & Co.
Spencer Trask & Co. is an advanced technology development firm that scales discoveries from the idea stage to the world stage. The firm and its principals have founded or first-funded 12 new ventures that reached a valuation of $1 billion or more and exceeded a combined market value of $128 billion. Once startups, these companies are now global leaders in genomics, the Internet, mobile communications, healthcare, and artificial intelligence.

About Fastcase
Fastcase is a comprehensive legal intelligence company, founded in 1999 and based in Washington, D.C. Partnering with the bar associations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Fastcase serves more than 1.1 million lawyers from around the world. The company provides an innovative research suite of primary law, dockets, treatises, legal blogs, analytics, workflow tools, and legal news.

About vLex
vLex is a leading provider of multi-award-winning technology and global legal information, offering comprehensive and intuitive access to the law in over 200 jurisdictions. Recognised as the Overall Legal Research Solution Provider of the Year 2022, vLex provides over two million lawyers, researchers, government departments, and law schools around the world with access to bespoke technology that enhances research and the connectivity of over 130 million editorially enriched legal documents, all on a single intelligent platform.

About Oakley Capital
Founded in 2002 and with €5 billion AuM, Oakley Capital is a pan-European private equity firm backing ambitious growth companies across three core sectors – Technology, Consumer and Education. Oakley is able to deliver differentiated investment opportunities and superior returns by leveraging its entrepreneurial mindset and deep sector expertise. The Oakley team works closely with a unique network of entrepreneurs and successful management teams to help source primary, proprietary opportunities and gain valuable insights into the businesses in which it invests. Its ability to overcome complexity, and a flexible approach to value creation, allows Oakley to support its portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth.

About Bain Capital
Bain Capital is one of the world's leading private investment firms with approximately $160 billion in assets under management that creates lasting impact for its investors, teams, businesses and the communities in which we live. Founded in 1984, the firm pioneered a consulting-based approach to private equity investing, partnering closely with management teams to offer the insights that challenge conventional thinking, build great businesses and improve operations. Over time, they have organically expanded this approach across asset classes to build one of the strongest alternative asset platforms in the world.

SOURCE Spencer Trask & Co.