As I write this (kindly tipped off by the ever-alert Jonathan Maas of DLA Piper UK LLP) FTI Consulting is running a Webcast about its proposed acquisition of Attenex Corporation announced yesterday. The acquisition is subject to the relevant US regulatory processes.

No time, alas, to listen, nor to think through the implications for the UK market, but you may like to read the press release. The Webcast is (for now anyway) here.

The press release rightly emphasises that the addition of Attenex to FTI’s acquisition of Ringtail means (in their words) that FTI “now owns key proprietary technology for each crucial step of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), providing clients with a single source, industry leading solution”.

The slide supporting the Webcast illustrates this. The processing stage will be covered by Attenex Patterns® eDiscovery software which (their words again) “automates data processing and provides powerful visualization tools for quickly analyzing massive amounts of electronically stored information (ESI)” which will be more closely integrated with Ringtail (there is already software designed to move data between the two products), with FTI’s consulting services as an over-arching link.

Both products can be hosted or installed on site, allowing corporate and law firm customers to use the same technology whichever set-up suits them – which may be different for the same customer on different cases.

More follows.