Robert Ambrogi Blog
In an in-depth piece I wrote about HerculesAI last February, I noted that the past year had been a big one for the company. Well, it just got even bigger, as Aderant, a leading global provider of business management software for law firms, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire HerculesAI’s legal technology assets.
Previously known as ZERO, HerculesAI rebranded to its new name last year, as it also raised $26 million in Series B funding and launched a new AI-powered pre-bill review platform, Verify, that it said could detect up to 50% of billing compliance issues before they result in client deductions.
Under the deal, Aderant is acquiring all of the legal technology assets of HerculesAI, including the people that develop and support them. The products included are Apollo, Athena, and Verify, which are the HerculesAI products that support the legal vertical.
The company HerculesAI will continue to exist and operate its other product lines that address the needs of customers in the insurance and finance industries. This is not a full acquisition but a carve-out of their legal business.
Alex Babin, the founder and CEO of HerculesAI, and other members of the executive team, will remain with that company.
Aderant says this acquisition is a significant leap forward in its mission to deliver a fully automated, insight-rich, and agile work-to-cash solution for the legal industry.
By embedding HerculesAI’s advanced machine learning and decision intelligence into its solutions, Aderant says, it is “unlocking unprecedented levels of automation, insight, and agility for law firms around the globe.”
“By integrating HerculesAI’s advanced compliance engine with our industry-leading work-to-cash platform, we’re not just automating workflows — we’re enabling intelligent automation that drives measurable profitability,” Chris Cartrett, Aderant’s president and CEO, said in a statement announcing the deal. “Law firms will gain unprecedented precision, speed, and confidence in their operations.”
Related: A Special Interview with Aderant CEO Chris Cartrett Recorded Live at Its Momentum Global Conference.
Insofar as the deal includes bringing the entire HerculesAI legal technology team to Aderant, Cartrett said: “This acquisition will only enhance the AI engineering and data science talent within Aderant. That’s not just a win—it’s a strategic leap forward.”
Babin, HerculesAI’s CEO, said: “Aderant is a leading force in legal technology, and each of HerculesAI’s legal products fits naturally into their portfolio. This move strengthens Aderant’s end-to-end work-to-cash offering and further transforms compliance from a bottleneck into a business accelerator. Just as important as product synergy is the cultural alignment between our teams – a shared commitment to solving real problems for customers. That alignment goes beyond technology and sets the foundation for long-term impact.”
HerculesAI launched in 2017 under its former name, ZERO, and developed a mobile app that automatically captured lawyers’ billable time spent working on email on their mobile phones. (In 2020, I wrote about a “lite” version of this app ZERO released for smaller firms.)
In 2021, it launched a desktop product, Apollo, that automatically captured time spent on billable work on a desktop device and integrated those time entries into the lawyer’s billing platform. It continues to offer both AI-powered time capture and AI-powered email classification and filing.
Last year, it launched its AI-powered pre-bill review platform, Verify, saying it was so confident in the product that it offered its customers a Herculean promise, putting guarantees in their contracts that if they did not reach a specified level of return on investment, then they owed nothing.
If you will be attending ILTACON this week, you can find Aderant there at booth #501 and HerculesAI at booth #1209.
A Special Interview with Aderant CEO Chris Cartrett Recorded Live at Its Momentum Global Conference