Kansas legal tech startup’s exit unlocks opportunity to accelerate innovation, founder says

An Overland Park startup developing intuitive websites and marketing solutions for small law firms says its just-announced acquisition by a leading cloud-based legal operations platform is the verdict needed to push its services to mid-market clients and beyond.

Robert Zhou, founder of Legalfit

“Combining the best-in-class websites with practice management software unlocks a unique opportunity to deepen product integration and accelerate innovation to help law firms grow faster,” said Robert Zhou, founder of Legalfit.

Financial and organizational terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Zhou has departed the startup and is now seeking early-stage SaaS companies in which to invest or provide mentorship. The rest of the Legalfit leadership team remains, he said.

Legalfit is the premier web marketing platform tailored to optimize law firms’ brand and business objectives. Founded by Zhou in 2015, company leaders believe that with enough data, analytics, and automation, law firms are able to take the guesswork out of marketing decisions, Zhou said.

Click here to explore Legalfit.

Its acquisition by Dallas-based Centerbase is expected to help Legalfit expand its services into the larger platform’s network.

“When we saw Legalfit’s dedicated legal CMS and intake capabilities, we knew we had to bring them into the Centerbase family of products,” said John Forbes, founder and CEO of Centerbase. “It’s a huge step forward in our mission to power the growth of law firms. With Legalfit, we are able to provide our clients with a robust, scalable website CMS on top of the practice management and billing suite we already offer, bringing true end-to-end visibility of the client lifecycle.”

“It adds immense value to our clients to unite these products and give law firms the first client relationship management (CRM) tool that tracks the complete client lifecycle, enabling them to not only improve operational efficiency, but drive more business,” he continued.

Click here to learn more about Centerbase.

The acquisition comes at a time of accelerated growth for Centerbase. Following a growth equity investment from Mainsail Partners in 2021 and continued momentum year-to-date, Centerbase has invested heavily in its core product while exploring feature and practice area-specific integrations.

Click here to read more about Mainsail Partners’ recently announced $31 million investment in another Overland Park company.

The Legalfit announcement also follows Centerbase’s acquisition of Family Law Software. As family law firms tend to have the most paperwork-intensive intake process, Legalfit’s software will allow family law clients to populate intake forms and provide access to the client portal directly on their firm websites, Forbes said.

“No one else in the market can offer a client experience like this. It’s going to be exciting watching our clients run their firms in ways they’d only dreamed of before,” he said. “And the growth they’ll experience in return will be exponential.”

This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

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