Xakia appoints UK legaltech entrepreneur

Xakia appoints UK legaltech entrepreneur

London-based law matter in-house management developers hire Dan Wales to join the team

The Australia-based legal tech company Xakia Technologies has appointed an entrepreneur based in the UK as its first vice president to support the expansion of the company across EMEA.

In his newly-created role, Dan Wales will lead sales and strategic development, reporting to CEO Jodie Baker and continue to be based in London.

In 2018, Wales was acquired by software giant BigHand for an undisclosed sum after founding DW Reporting, a data-driven pricing technology for the legal sector.

The flagship product of Xakia Technologies, Xakia, is focused on legal matter management, legal intake and triage, legal spend and external counsel management, legal data analytics and reporting as well.

Aside from being the only multilingual platform on the market, Xakia can also be configured in English, Japanese, Spanish, French, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese.

Wales explained that when lawyers move from private practice to in-house, the technology they have there is not necessarily carried over. "I see this position as an opportunity to play a role in democratizing technology in the legal sector, which tends to involve more transparency than visibility. We are now hoping to build up our European operations to the same standard as Xakia's operations in the US and the Asia Pacific."

Britain's appointment of Wales will play a "critical role" in growing the company's footprint in Europe, according to Baker, who is based in Australia. Australia and Missouri have currently been named bases for the company.

Baker says the growth of his client base in EMEA over the past year demonstrates the need for a truly simple in-house legal matter management platform. He says legal tech doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. By removing the barriers to adoption, Xakia is making the technology accessible to everyone, enabling scalability, usability and affordability."

DW Reporting was founded by Wales, who previously held finance, project and reporting management positions at law firms, including Mayer Brown, Hogan Lovells, and Howard Kennedy. In 1996, after BigHand acquired his company, he founded Oliella Partners, a London-based legal consultancy.

In a bid to increase its analytics capabilities, BigHand acquired US business intelligence and financial analytics provider Iridium Technology earlier this month. Iridium's 100-strong team moved to BigHand as part of the deal, bringing the company's total headcount to over 350.