Jamie Judd from RSGI spoke with Opus 2, Uncover, Matheson and Quinn Emanuel in this analysis of Opus 2’s acquisition of Uncover and how it sits within the context of the wider litigation tech market.
On October 9th, Opus 2 acquired Dutch legal AI start-up Uncover, with the combination of Uncover’s six-person team and proprietorial AI set to extend Opus 2’s AI functionality.
Uncover, founded in 2022 by former litigation lawyers Ingrid van de Pol-Mensing (ex De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek), and Caroline Zand-Korteweg (ex-Jones Day and Lemstra Van der Korst), built an AI assistant to address the workflow challenges the founding team had experienced in practice. Their tool organises documents, generates timelines, and researches cases for clients such as Dutch law firm AKD (with 400 + lawyers and notaries), and in-house legal teams such as dairy multinational, FrieslandCampina.
Founded in 2008 in London, Opus 2’s initial focus was to support litigation teams preparing for and conducting court hearings. From 2023, it has operated a wider case management system, which Uncover will now support. The team at Uncover claim that results of their integration will be seen in three months.
“Our cases product is sold on a SaaS basis so we can manage the entire breadth of [a firm’s] cases,” says Beau Wysong, Opus 2’s marketing lead. Opus 2 will leverage Uncover’s expertise to accelerate its gen-AI focused development, while Uncover gain the resources of a larger organisation. Opus 2’s client base, which includes 88 of the current AmLaw 100, will eventually experience Uncover as part of the Opus 2 platform. “These won’t be products that sit side by side, this is now Opus 2,” says Wysong.
Does the Opus 2-Uncover deal signify that the litigation tech industry is moving away from point solutions to integrated platforms? Zand-Korteweg of Uncover seems to think so. “We both saw a shift from all these different solutions to this is slowly going to be more consolidated. Lawyers are not going to want to use all these different solutions next to each other.”
However, Kyle Gribben, head of Matheson’s Digital Services Group, says: “It’s far too early to rule out point solutions, particularly in litigation and trial preparation, where specialised solutions can capture subject matter expertise in areas that firms prioritise higher quality, even if at the expense of integration.” He accepts there will be overlap in a technology stack.
Meanwhile, seasoned trial lawyers continue to embrace litigation tech and are developing a competitive edge by integrating AI into their workflows.
Chris Kercher, a trial lawyer at litigation powerhouse, Quinn Emanuel says that in the recent Desktop Metal case, his team ran circles around their opponents. “We had 70,000 documents to review over a weekend—a daunting challenge that would have cost a fortune and been prone to error under time pressure. By having a relatively young team of eager early adopters use Syllo [another AI-powered litigation workspace] for document review and our firm’s AI tools as a thought partner for strategy, we could iterate quickly and adjust to things happening in real time. It felt like we had a special weapon in our arsenal that others couldn’t match.”
Opus 2 did not wish to disclose Uncover’s purchase price or its official revenues but is estimated by LeadIQ to have annual revenues of approximately $75 million. Still one of the largest platforms for case preparation, it does have to contend with both larger and smaller competitors on the overall case management front.
Just last week, TrialView, an Irish AI-powered dispute resolution software platform, announced a US$4.1 million raise, led by Elkstone Ventures, to expand to the United States. Self-funded since founding, TrialView has grown to almost US$3m ARR in the last three years, with operations in the UK, Continental Europe and Middle East.
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