LegalTech 2008-2011: Measuring the eDiscovery Recession

Officially, the U.S. recession started in December 2007 and ‘ended’ last June. Unofficially, we all know of talented people who are still looking for work. Anecdotally, the eDiscovery market seemed to bottom out in the third quarter of last year. I know that I saw a lot more resumes floating around LegalTech 2010 than in previous years. That led me to wonder who had closed shop or been acquired in the last couple years. I figured that one of the better ways to chase this list down would be to compare the LTNY Exhibitor lists from year to year. This exercise turned up some interesting numbers and facts.

I started with the simple metrics of the number of exhibitors per year from 2008 – 2011. The slow recovery may result in a number a last second exhibitors this year as marketing execs look at their budgets. A quick look at the 84 exhibitors from 2010 who are not yet on the 2011 list revealed several healthy, expanding providers. What was interesting to me was the flat number of exhibitors in 2008-2009 and the spike in the 2010 show, right when everyone seemed to be feeling the pinch. The predictions of meteoric revenue growth in the eDiscovery market seemed to attract a lot of peripheral players wanting to capitalize on the hot new market. Given the drop in the current 2011 exhibitor list, I would hazard that many of these services (translators, telecom, web, IT, etc) decided that eDiscovery is more than just a label.


There are 59 exhibitors from 2008 who did not exhibit in the 2010 boom. That means that over 36% of the ‘players’ in 2008 either elected not to exhibit, closed or reorganized in some manner. That is a lot of turnover. We only lost 40 exhibitors from 2009 to the 2010 show, a 25% change. There are a rough total of 312 distinct exhibitors over all four years (not trying to reconcile name changes). Only 83 exhibitors are represented in all 4 years, so roughly 50% of the overall market. That number jumps to 95 if you take out 2011 as being too early for a final count. That still says a lot for the volatility of our emerging market space.

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Source: ediscoveryjournal.com
By: Greg Buckles