In Notable E-Discovery News, ALSP Elevate Acquires Consulting Company Redgrave Data

In notable news for the e-discovery industry, the legal software and services provider Elevate has acquired Redgrave Data, a consulting firm that provides services and software for e-discovery and data analytics.

Redgrave’s founders Mollie Nichols, Scott Culbertson, Dave Lewis, Mark Noel, and Lindsey Worth will all join Elevate’s management team.

Redgrave Data was formed in 2022 as a spin-off from the law firm Redgrave LLP, which specializes in e-discovery and information law, with the goal of providing “innovative services and solutions centered at the intersection of the law, technology, and science.”

Nichols, who had been Redgrave Data’s CEO, is a former Redgrave partner and e-discovery expert who, prior to founding Redgrave Data, was head of advanced client data solutions at Hogan Lovells.

Other founding members of the leadership team included Scott Culbertson, who previously served in senior management roles at several data analytics and discovery solutions companies; Dave Lewis, who was previously executive VP for AI research, development, and ethics at Reveal-Brainspace; Mark Noel, previously director of advanced client data solutions at Hogan Lovells, leader of Stroz Friedberg’s advanced technology consulting practice, and managing director at Catalyst, where he helped develop machine learning tools and workflows; and Lindsey Worth, a former litigator who was most recently senior manager, Americas, for advanced client data solutions at Hogan Lovells.

Redgrave Data’s founding leadership team: Lindsey Worth, Mark Noel, Mollie Nichols, Scott Culbertson and Dave Lewis.

Redgrave Data’s primary focus is on providing innovative and defensible technology strategies, insights, services, and solutions to customers who face challenges with electronically stored information in a legal context.

In a 2022 interview with LawSites, Nichols told me that she believed Redgrave Data’s “special sauce” was its team of lawyer-technologists who are able to look at a problem and come up with a solution — often building the solutions themselves if no commercial product fits the bill.

It has particularly expertise in technology-assisted review, artificial intelligence, generative AI, analytics, robotic process automation, and data visualization.

In fact, I recently interviewed three Redgrave Data scientists, including cofounder Lewis, for my LawNext podcast on the question of whether generative AI is the new paradigm for TAR in e-discovery.

“We founded Elevate to integrate expertise and technology to innovate and transform work with a legal and business dimension that needs to be done every day, often at scale, and sometimes urgently,” Liam Brown, Elevate’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement announcing the acquisition. “We recognized how Redgrave Data ‘run a different race’ to tackle the world’s thorniest legal data and technology issues strategically, efficiently, and effectively.”

Nichols, in the same announcement, said, “Joining our strengths to those of another Chambers Band 1 NewLaw company is going to expand our ability to provide outstanding services to our clients. Teaming up with Elevate will provide a global platform to support our international clients more effectively. Elevate’s resources will also allow us to accelerate the development of our innovation projects more efficiently and at scale.”