By ADAM GIFFORD
Keystone Software, the New Zealand-founded developer of legal practice management software, has leapfrogged into the United States market with the $US8 million acquisition of the software division of BISPoint Technologies.
Kaye Sycamore, Keystone's international director of marketing, said BISPoint's hardware division was not included in the purchase.
"BISPoint had a hardware services division and a legal software division, and they were always run separately," Ms Sycamore said.
"This is a great fit. We knew a US market acquisition had to be considered at some time, and we'd looked at the players in the marketplace. BISPoint was best in terms of product range, size and customer base among the top-tier law firms.
"When we met with its management team we realised it was likely to be a mutually acceptable deal."
Keystone is listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange and has 80 staff at offices in London, Sydney and Auckland.
The BISPoint deal will be partly funded by this week's placing 3,842,422 ordinary shares at 70p to existing institutional and other investors, which raised sterling 2.4 million. The balance will come from the sterling 7.8 million Keystone recently raised in London.
Ms Sycamore said Australian company Solution 6's purchase of the two major US legal practice software firms, CMS Open and Elite, created an opportunity.
"Between them those companies have 60 per cent of the top 100 law firms.
"The marketplace is confused about which products Solution 6 will continue to support, and concerned at the prospect of there being only one supplier of practice software."
Ms Sycamore said the purchase should greatly reduce Keystone's cost of entry into the US market.
Keystone picks up Javelin, a well-established legal practice management product, and LegalHouse, a business intelligence suite including financial analysis, modelling and reporting, which will be rebranded Keystone Net Results.
"The LegalHouse product was already extending beyond the legal market, and our strategy is to move it to the wider professional services market," Ms Sycamore said.
She said Keystone's software will be integrated into the BISPoint products, as well as be sold separately as packaged software or from Keystone Online.
Legal software firm buys into US
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