Catherine Krow to become MD for diversity and impact analytics as BigHand acquires Digitory Legal

Catherine Krow to become MD for diversity and impact analytics as BigHand acquires Digitory Legal

The acquisition is the latest in a series of purchases by the software technology company as it broadens the scope of its product offerings

Legaltech provider BigHand has acquired the cost analytics platform Digitory Legal to strengthen its resource management and matter pricing products. The high-profile founder of Digitory, Catherine Krow now becomes managing director (diversity, and impact analytics), for the San Francisco-based platform.

It will help the law firms and in-house legal departments to analyze timecard and billing data, which could predict and refine future pricing and fee proposals. The data generated could also be used to allocate work based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) considerations, and help to meet growing client demand for teams to be sufficiently diverse.

Eric Wangler, the managing director of people productivity at BigHand, stated, "Digitory's name kept popping up in discussions we were having with clients about their resourcing and work allocation processes, especially in conversations about DEI. From early in the partnership discussions, it became apparent there was also a strong connection with our matter pricing solution and how timecard data could be better used in the matter budgeting process."

Catherine Krow, the founder, and CEO at Digitory, said, "Throughout my time practicing law, I witnessed the growing tensions between lawyers and clients frustrated by poorly scoped and inaccurate budgets and fee structures which lead to cost overruns and/or write-offs."

She added that it was often because of poor quality billing data and the challenge of using data to create more accurate fee proposals. But when the company realized how much hidden insight there was in the data around DE&I, the business took on a whole new purpose.

Prior to founding Digitory, Krow spent 12 years as a litigation lawyer at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe. For nine years, she was a partner at the firm. She has received accolades for her work promoting diversity within the legal profession and legal tech.