3/8/2010 — Insurance brokerage Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. (MMC: News ) has put Kroll, its corporate investigations division, up for sale for about $1.3 billion, according to a report in the Financial Times on Monday.

According to the FT report, the sale has attracted private equity firms including the Carlyle Group, Apax Partners and General Atlantic. These firms entered bids by the deadline for first expressions of interest in late February, while BCPartners might be a potential buyer alongside one or two trade bidders, the report noted, citing people familiar with the situation.

Other expressions of interest for Kroll include from its founder, Jules Kroll, who sold the business to Marsh in 2004 for $1.9 billion. The founder of Kroll recently launched a new boutique investigations firm called K2. He no longer owns a significant stake in Marsh.

Craig Ball, noted forensics guru, just published an article in Law Technology News that caught our attention. In this article, The Lowdown on Backups, Craig states that backup tapes have a bad reputation stating, “Backup tape has long been the poster child for ESI deemed “not reasonably accessible… you can’t search backup tapes unless [...]

CHICAGO & NEW YORK, Feb 23, 2010 — R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company (NASDAQ:RRD) and Bowne & Co., Inc. (NYSE:BNE) jointly announced today that they have signed a definitive agreement pursuant to which RR Donnelley will acquire Bowne & Co., Inc., a provider of shareholder and marketing communications services. The all cash deal is valued at approximately $481 million, or $11.50 per share. The agreement has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to RR Donnelley’s earnings in the first full year after the closing of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the second half of the year. The completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and approval of Bowne shareholders.

The combination with Bowne, which has operations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, will expand and enhance the range of services RR Donnelley offers to its customers, while also creating an opportunity for RR Donnelley to provide its comprehensive line of products to Bowne’s clients.

Bowne, headquartered in New York, had revenues of approximately $675 million during 2009 and offers digital one-to-one printing services for healthcare, transactional communications, financial services, marketing communications and other applications.

Second Stop in Cross-Country Tour Trains and Certifies More Than 80 Professionals

Denver Colorado, February 25, 2010—Catalyst Repository Systems announced today that its second Certified Reviewer Training, recently held in New York City, concluded with more than 80 lawyers and other professionals who attended four capacity sessions becoming certified as reviewers. The program was in such demand that some traveled more than 200 miles to attend.

The training, the second in a series that will cross the U.S. with the next stop in Los Angeles, was held for members of The Posse List, a resource and networking site for contract attorneys. “I am actually not surprised”, said Gregory Bufithis, Founder and Chairman of the Posse List. “Catalyst is gaining market share and is being requested by many corporations and law firms due to its many options and easy programmability, and its multi-language capabilities”.

“We are thrilled to receive another enthusiastic response,” said Patty Daly, Catalyst’s Director of Training. “The program has become so popular with contract attorneys and reviewers that it has been difficult to keep up with demand.”

The first in the series took place this past fall in Washington, D.C., and was so popular that the company added two additional sessions in order to meet the demand and eventually had to turn people away. Catalyst and The Posse List plan to continue with the momentum from the program and visit other U.S. cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Launched in early 2009, the program began as a web-based training designed for managed review groups. It trains individuals on review using Catalyst CR’s Assigned Review Module. So far, the program has netted 400 registrants and certified more than 200 individuals with nine managed review companies.

About The Posse List

The Posse List is a worldwide membership organization that provides information to the legal market about e-discovery and ESI management through seminars, webinars and articles on its two websites, www.theposselist.com and www.ediscoveryreadingroom.com.  It also maintains an extensive listserv that notifies its members of jobs in the e-discovery and ESI management markets.  Its members include contract attorneys, forensics consultants, paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, bar associations, e-discovery/ESI vendors and others.

The Posse List provides extensive coverage of all the major e-discovery/ESI meetings and conferences, such as the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting, ABA TECHSHOW, the International Legal Support Leaders Conference, the International Legal Technology Association conference, the IQPC conferences, LegalTech New York, LegalTech West, Masters Conference, and the Thompson Reuters conferences.

For more information about The Posse List, please visit http://www.theposselist.com.

About Catalyst

Catalyst Repository Systems is a leading legal-technology company providing secure, scalable multi-lingual document repositories for electronic discovery, litigation support, and other complex regulatory matters. For over a decade, corporations and their counsel have relied on Catalyst to control litigation costs and make review teams more effective. Our systems and supporting services cover the heart of the litigation lifecycle-from processing and analytics, to search, review, production and trial.

Catalyst delivers its software directly and through a global partner network that offers consulting, collection, project management and forensic services. The company manages hundreds of servers in two data centers and has hosted for many of the largest organizations in the world, including five of the world’s 10 largest companies, four of the nation’s 10 largest insurers and 80 of the nation’s 100 largest law firms.

Media Contact:

Chelsey Lehman
Marketing Coordinator
Catalyst Repository Systems
303.824.0858
clehman@catalystsecure.com

Allows for quick and easy data updating for productions and corrections, giving clients control over their data.

Denver Colorado, February 24, 2010—Catalyst Repository Systems, a leading provider of scalable, multi-language document repositories for complex litigation and regulatory compliance, announced the release of its Fast Track Data Overlay Service. The new service gives clients full control over their documents and metadata with the ability to update data directly via FTP with no waiting.

The service can be used to update production information or to correct multiple records at the same time. Users can choose to replace existing data or append new information to the desired records and fields.

Clients control the process using an FTP site to submit Microsoft Access data overlays to Catalyst. The system validates the overlay upon receipt providing immediate feedback to clients. Once validated, corrections and data additions appear almost instantly on the site, providing more control, higher quality process, and reduced costs.

“The service brings us one step closer to completing our vision of automation and putting control back into our clients’ hands,” said John Tredennick, Catalyst’s founder and CEO. “Our goal is to allow our clients to manage the eDiscovery process from beginning to end without the need to seek support or assistance from their outside vendor.”

The journey began in January of 2009 with the release of Fast Track Data Loading and has continued in 2010 with Fast Track Processing. These services, along with Fast Track Data Overlay create a seamless automated process from processing raw files through review and production.

About Catalyst

Catalyst Repository Systems is a leading legal-technology company providing secure, scalable multi-lingual document repositories for electronic discovery, litigation support, and other complex regulatory matters. For over a decade, corporations and their counsel have relied on Catalyst to control litigation costs and make review teams more effective. Our systems and supporting services cover the heart of the litigation lifecycle-from processing and analytics, to search, review, production and trial.

Catalyst delivers its software directly and through a global partner network that offers consulting, collection, project management and forensic services. The company manages hundreds of servers in two data centers and has hosted for many of the largest organizations in the world, including five of the world’s 10 largest companies, four of the nation’s 10 largest insurers and 80 of the nation’s 100 largest law firms.

Media Contact:

Chelsey Lehman
Marketing Coordinator
Catalyst Repository Systems
303.824.0858
clehman@catalystsecure.com

Award Recognizes 100 fastest growing companies located in America’s Inner Cities.

Denver Colorado, February 23, 2010—Catalyst Repository Systems announced today that it has been named a finalist for the Inner City 100, a program that spotlights the fastest-growing companies in urban areas, highlighting the importance of creating healthy inner city economies.

This comes on heels of a very successful year at Catalyst. In 2009, the company and leadership team won a number of awards, including Entrepreneur of the Year, CFO of the Year, Colorado Biz Magazine Top Company and Colorado Companies to Watch.

“We are honored to be named a finalist for this award,” said John Tredennick, Catalyst’s founder and CEO. “We feel lucky to be able to call the Lower Downtown area of Denver our home and are proud to be a part of the community here.”

Inner City 100 program was created in 1999 by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City in order to change perceptions about inner city business. The award serves to prove that not only can companies thrive in inner cities, but that they can achieve competitive advantages by doing business in the inner cities. Over the past 10 years, the companies that have made the list have:

• Created almost 63,000 new jobs.
• Employed nearly 86,000 people of which 41% are inner-city residents.
• An average compound annual growth rate of 52%.
• Generated approximately $2.3 billion in total sales per year.

About the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City

The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter. ICIC’s mission is to promote economic prosperity in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income and wealth creation for local residents. ICIC brings together business and civic leaders to drive innovation and action, transform thinking and accelerate inner city business growth and investment.

About Catalyst

Catalyst Repository Systems is a leading legal-technology company providing secure, scalable multi-lingual document repositories for electronic discovery, litigation support, and other complex regulatory matters. For over a decade, corporations and their counsel have relied on Catalyst to control litigation costs and make review teams more effective. Our systems and supporting services cover the heart of the litigation lifecycle-from processing and analytics, to search, review, production and trial.

Catalyst delivers its software directly and through a global partner network that offers consulting, collection, project management and forensic services. The company manages hundreds of servers in two data centers and has hosted for many of the largest organizations in the world, including five of the world’s 10 largest companies, four of the nation’s 10 largest insurers and 80 of the nation’s 100 largest law firms.

Media Contact:

Chelsey Lehman
Marketing Coordinator
Catalyst Repository Systems
303.824.0858
clehman@catalystsecure.com

BOSTON, Feb 22, 2010 — Iron Mountain Incorporated, an information management services company, today announced it has acquired Santa Clara, Calif.-based Mimosa Systems, Inc., a leader in enterprise-class content archiving solutions, for approximately $112 million in cash, subject to closing adjustments. The deal provides Iron Mountain with an integrated archive for email, SharePoint data and files, and gives the company an on-premises archiving option to complement its existing cloud-based archives.

The ability to archive and manage data both onsite, inside the customer’s firewall, and remotely in the cloud makes Iron Mountain a one-stop shop for data capture, archiving and management. It also provides the company’s customers with greater flexibility and choice for managing their information.

Additionally, the company can now capture and manage a broader range of enterprise information from so-called “edge-of-the-network” devices like desktop PCs and laptops as well as from company repositories like email stores, SharePoint servers and file systems. Many larger businesses still prefer to keep this data on their premises today. Finally, the acquisition allows Iron Mountain to extract intelligence from the information it manages both on-premises and in the cloud, advancing the company’s larger strategy to help enterprises lower the costs and risks associated with storing and managing information.

The American Bar Association recently published a report on litigation support software and online document review tools.

Some of the software products compared are:

• Case Logistix
• Concordance and FYI
• CT Summation iBlaze
• iCONECTnXT
• ImageDepot
• NextPoint

Below is a description of the report as found on the ABA website, which can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking the link below.

Litigation support software is designed to aid lawyers in the process of litigation, and generally includes databases for organizing, searching, and reviewing discovery material including deposition transcripts, produced documents, and correspondence. The comparison chart below includes information on features of several brands of litigation support software. As vendors may offer other packages, please check each vendor’s website for additional details and contact information. The information in this chart originates from the vendors, is not a comprehensive review of litigation support software, and does not constitute endorsements of any kind.

A private investment fund formed by a team of experienced operators, entrepreneurs, and investors is looking for acquisition opportunities in the legal outsourcing industry.

The seasoned team of investors are looking for the following characteristics in acquisition candidates:

• A strong track record of growth
• Revenues of $5m or greater with 15% or better EBITDA margins
• Senior management looking to exit or bring on a new partner

If you are interested in learning more, please contact me at jenkins.bradley@gmail.com and I will be happy to make an introduction. Serious inquiries only please.

16 February 2010 — Actis announced today that it has invested US $50 million to acquire a substantial minority stake in Integreon, the leading global provider of legal support, research and business services to law firms, financial institutions and corporations.

As part of this investment, JM Trivedi, Actis’s Head of South Asia, and Gautham Radhakrishnan, a Director at Actis, will join Integreon’s board of directors.

Actis has invested alongside Ayala Corporation, the oldest and one of the leading conglomerates in the Philippines, which initially invested in Integreon in 2006 through LiveIt Investments, its business process outsourcing holding company. Ayala Corporation will continue to hold a majority stake in Integreon.

Today, professionals at leading organisations including 11 of the top 50 global brands such as Microsoft; 32 of the AmLaw 50 such as Clifford Chance and DLA Piper US LLP; and 9 of the top 10 global investment banks focus on their ‘highest and best use’ by trusting high-quality research, document, and legal solutions from Integreon. Integreon revenues have grown at an 83% CAGR since 2006 to an $89 million revenue run rate in Q4 2009.

With Actis’s investment, Integreon plans to grow its range of services and technologies, launch new delivery centres, and seek strategic acquisitions.