PERSUIT, a technology company specializing in outside counsel management solutions for corporate legal departments, has announced its acquisition of Apperio, a legal spend management platform. This strategic merger coincides with the opening of the CLOC Global Legal Institute conference in Las Vegas, a premier event for legal operations professionals.
The acquisition represents a significant step toward PERSUIT's vision of delivering an integrated platform that revolutionizes how legal departments scope, price, select and monitor external legal services. By combining their technologies, the company aims to transform legal operations into a strategic business driver.
Founded in New York in 2016, PERSUIT has developed a platform that enhances how in-house legal teams engage with law firms through competitive and transparent RFP processes, along with tools for benchmarking, rate negotiation and data-driven decision-making. Two years ago, the company enhanced its capabilities by introducing AI-powered proposal analysis technology.
Apperio, established in London in 2013 by former lawyer Nicholas d'Adhemar, provides corporate legal departments with comprehensive visibility into their legal spending through a unified dashboard. The platform consolidates and analyzes both historical and current legal expenditures, including work-in-progress, while streamlining invoice approval workflows. After launching a major U.S. market expansion initiative in 2020, Apperio secured $7 million in growth funding in 2023 to accelerate these efforts.
Jim Delkousis, PERSUIT's CEO, emphasized that this acquisition enhances their ability to connect every aspect of the outside counsel workflow with intelligence, stating they're "not just managing spend — we're turning it into performance."
The combined platform promises complete transparency into legal spending with real-time invoice validation, ensuring alignment between value delivered and compensation. Dominic Aelberry, Apperio's current CEO, expressed enthusiasm about joining forces with PERSUIT, noting that together they will provide legal teams with actionable data across every workflow stage.
PERSUIT reports that 97% of global 200 law firms actively use their platform, which has facilitated more than 10,000 legal matters and processed over $17 billion in proposals. In 2021, the company secured $20 million in Series A funding.
