Clearwell Systems is transforming the way enterprises, government agencies and law firms perform electronic discovery (e-discovery) in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries, and internal investigations. The Clearwell E-Discovery Platform automates the end-to-end e-discovery process – from identification, collection and preservation through processing, analysis, review and production – via a single, integrated product. Household names such as American Airlines, Coca-Cola, GE, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, OfficeMax, Time Warner, Toyota and Walmart are using Clearwell to streamline legal hold notifications, automate collections, accelerate early case assessments, intelligently cull-down data, increase reviewer productivity, and ensure the defensibility of their e-discovery process.
The idea for the original business strategy was formed in 2004 when founder Venkat Rangan, an early architect of Microsoft Exchange, teamed with Bill Coughran, VP of Engineering at Google, to solve business problems requiring large-scale analysis of terabytes of electronic corporate data. The company received its first round of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital in 2005 and launched out of stealth mode in early 2006. Clearwell’s executive management explored several market opportunities for the technology and, based on early customer feedback, decided to focus the product and company primarily for the e-discovery market.
Today, Clearwell employs over 200 people with offices in Mountain View, California and London, UK. The Clearwell E-Discovery Platform is used globally, with distribution through both direct sales and a network of partners spreading from North America to EMEA and Asia. The business has significant leverage as the company achieved profitability in Q1 2009 and has increased profitability in every subsequent quarter. The company is investing profits back into the business and doubling the size of the research and development, sales and support teams to achieve its mission of helping every single organization worldwide dramatically reduce their cost and risk related to e-discovery.
Clearwell is consistently ranked as a leader in independent e-discovery industry surveys and reports, and has received the highest ranking of “strong positive” in Gartner’s MarketScope Report for E-Discovery Vendors for the past two years. The company has received awards and accolades from the industry’s leading authorities including the Socha-Gelbmann E-Discovery Survey, International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), the Cowen Group, Law Technology News, KM World, Red Herring, SC Magazine, Network World, eWEEK and more. Clearwell is internationally recognized for its E-Discovery Platform, most recently being named a finalist for Best Small IT Supplier in the prestigious UK IT Industry Awards. As part of an effort to unify benchmarks, needs and targets within the e-discovery industry, Clearwell Systems is an active participant in industry standard bodies such as the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project, The Sedona Conference and the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC).
Clearwell is also a respected thought leader in the e-discovery industry, with company executives having contributed to leading publications including Legal Tech Newsletter, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Executive Counsel, Corporate Counsel, Inside Counsel, eWEEK, BusinessWeek. Members of the executive team are consistently invited to share their views on e-discovery at leading industry conferences including ILTA, Legal Tech, HTCIA, IQPC, ARMA International Annual Conference, American Corporate Counsel Association and more. The company’s E-Discovery 2.0 blog has wide readership within the space, and is often referenced by industry publications and fellow bloggers.
Internally, morale and enthusiasm among the staff rivals that of that largest technology companies. In 2010, Clearwell ranked fourth in the “Top Workplaces” list published by the Bay Area News Group and San Jose Mercury News. That same year, Clearwell earned second place in Silicon Valley Business Journal’s (SVBJ) “Best Places to Work in the Bay Area.” Clearwell’s chief financial officer Anup Singh was honored by SVBJ as the 2009 “CFO of the Year” among venture-backed companies.
Clearwell’s 2010 highlights include:
• Introduced pre-built templates incorporating best practice workflows gathered from leading enterprises, government agencies and law firms, to further help customers streamline their e-discovery workflow
• Awarded 2 additional US patents, reinforcing the technical innovation behind the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform
• Launched iClearwell, industry’s first e-discovery mobile app available on the iPhone and iPad
• Released Clearwell E-Discovery Platform version 6.0, an innovative solution that enables IT teams to identify and collect electronically stored information
• Unprecedented customer momentum, adding a string of Fortune 2000 companies including Office Max and Microsoft