LegalCloud: Managed Services Meet the Legal Vertical

LegalCloud isn’t your typical managed services provider. The Sausalito, Calif.-based company is targeting the legal vertical with a range of cloud, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), backup and disaster recovery services. I met CEO Mark Hadfield on January 15, and he shared portions of LegalCloud’s business plan with me. Here’s a look at his strategy.

First, a few key points: LegalCloud isn’t alone in the managed services market serving attorneys. MSPmentor in September 2009 spotted Total Attorneys, a Chicago-based law firm that focuses on small law firms and solo practitioners.

LegalCloud is going after a different market segment — specifically targeting legal practices that are large enough to land on American Lawyer’s annual Am Law 100 list. Launched in 2008, LegalCloud has already won business with at least one Am Law 100 company.

LegalCloud is the first of numerous brands Hadfield apparently plans to launch. All of the business brands will likely live under an umbrella corporate identity called nScaled Inc.

Also of note: Hadfield isn’t dealing with legacy issues and he isn’t strugging to move from break-fix offerings to recurring revenue. Indeed, LegalCloud was built from the ground up as a modern-day MSP with a per-employee customer pricing model.

Key Partners

So far, LegalCloud leverages a mix of homegrown technology and strategic IT  relationships with FalconStor, Rackspace, VMware and Vyatta. Keep a close eye on FalconStor throughout 2010. It’s a safe bet the storage and data protection specialist will work more and more closely with higher-end MSPs.

In the meantime, the following FastChat video — recorded during a visit to FalconStor on January 14 — quickly summarizes Hadfield’s business strategy at LegalCloud:

The video covers:

0:00: Introduction
0:10: Overview of nScaler and Legal Cloud
0:30: Why Hadfield targeted the legal vertical
1:23: What is LegalCloud’s revenue model?
2:16: Why LegalCloud started working with FalconStor
3:00: More information
3:15: Conclusion