Clients In The News: Elevate Acquires Legal OnRamp

One of our long time clients, Legal OnRamp, has been acquired by Elevate Services. A visionary company has been acquired by a market leader. I had met the CEO, Paul Lippe, when he was General Counsel at Synopsys and ran into him at a Churchill Club dinner in late 2005 as he was starting what became Legal OnRamp.

Elevate Acquires Legal OnRamp

Elevate Services, a global legal service provider to corporate legal departments and law firms, announced that it has acquired leading legal technology company OnRamp Systems Inc. Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of OnRamp, will join the Elevate advisory board to focus on strategic legal technology development and client relationships. All of OnRamp’s engineering team in Silicon Valley will join Elevate.

“OnRamp will strengthen our quickly-growing legal technology business,” said Liam Brown, Founder and Chairman of Elevate. “OnRamp’s technology provides a secure common platform enabling companies like Cisco to connect their legal departments with their outside counsel. The investments OnRamp has made in machine learning will help us develop software that makes lawyers more effective and efficient. More immediately, OnRamp’s US-based engineering team will improve our ability to deliver rapid prototype solutions for our clients.”

“Elevate has quickly become a leader in the legal market, and their ‘innovation DNA’ is very similar to ours,” said Paul Lippe, Founder and CEO of OnRamp. “Looking at Elevate’s leadership, global reach, client base, and capabilities, we decided the best way to serve the market was to join forces.”

“From our perspective as a legal department driving innovation and operational excellence, Elevate and OnRamp are a powerful combination,” said Steve Harmon, VP of Legal Operations at Cisco Systems. “We expect them to accelerate the adoption of new methodologies, tools and standards that will benefit both legal departments and law firms.”

About Elevate Services, Inc.
Elevate is the business of law provider of strategy, operations, technology and talent for legal departments and law firms. Elevate’s consultants, lawyers, process engineers, and technologists improve efficiency, quality and outcomes for clients worldwide. For more information, visit www.elevateservices.com.

About Legal OnRamp
Legal OnRamp is a leading Web 2.0 platform for law, helping legal departments reduce costs and improve quality through collaboration. For more information, visit www.legalonramp.com

source: April 28 2016 Press Release by Elevate (see also PR Newswire)

Paul Lippe founded Qulas, Inc in 2004 as a vehicle for changing how law was practiced. He brought a “design automation” perspective from his tenure as the General Counsel of Synopsys. I ran into him in late 2005 and provided informal and formal support from 2006 until this year. He had a vision for bringing a “design compiler” and synthesis approach to the analysis, management, and creation of legal agreements and insights into how Fortune 500 general counsel wanted to interact with partners in the AmLaw 200.

Dear Friend of OnRamp

I got the following E-Mail from Paul Lippe after the press release was issued on the morning of April 28, 2016:

I want to share with you the exciting news that OnRamp has been acquired by Elevate Services, the leader in technology-enabled legal services.  Elevate Acquires Legal OnRamp

Our goal has always been to assist and accelerate the modernization of legal practice to improve value, reduce costs, enhance careers and improve Access to Justice.  We’ve made enormous progress on this journey, but as we look around we realize that others like Elevate have made even more progress, and so the best way to achieve our goals is part of a larger organization.

Over the time I have been running OnRamp, one of the people I have come to admire most in this field is Liam Brown, the founder of Elevate.  Liam combines business and legal savvy and execution capability like few people I know, and has pulled together an outstanding team.

The OnRamp team will become part of Elevate as a primary locus of their Silicon Valley operations, and we will continue to focus on the same products and services as before.  With the formation of CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) I think we’ll see an acceleration of innovation by corporate legal departments, often in conjunction with their law firms, and Silicon Valley will likely remain in the forefront.  In addition, Elevate provides a range of services we don’t, especially around litigation.

For me personally, I will become a member of Elevate’s Advisory Board, and continue to work with our current and potential customers, especially around large project execution and legal department transformation.  I am also exploring some of the opportunities that have been coming my way as a General Counsel, Law School Dean, or in general management, but even if I take another role I will stay involved in the activities and mission of Elevate/OnRamp.

I want to offer a special thanks to my friends at Cisco, especially Mark Chandler, the General Counsel.  They have done an extraordinary job or providing the vision and leadership to help move law forward and respond to the challenges of a changing environment.

A few months ago I was visited by a delegation from the government of Singapore, seeking to understand how they can implement a better Rule of Law regime.  Athough we often take it for granted, Law performs a critical role in our society, and so working to modernize it and make it work better is a great and important challenge for us all.

Thanks for all your support and collaboration in the life of OnRamp, and I hope to be able to continue to collaborate with you as part of the Elevate integration and beyond.

Best
Paul Lippe

Paul Lippe is one of the smartest people I know. I have collaborated with him and his team on sales presentations, product and service ideas, and strategic planning. The practice of law is in very active ferment as new technologies and new business models interact in sometimes unpredictable ways to create value. I have learned a lot working with him and his team and believe that this new configuration will give them the support and resources to continue their efforts to transform how law is practiced and legal services are managed and delivered.

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