At the ILTA conference a little over a month ago, financial practice management provider ADERANT made quite a stir with their acquisition news, purchasing both CompuLaw LLC, (calendaring and court rule automation) and Client Profiles ('end-to-end' case management software for small to medium law firms) including their CRM4Legal product.

Then, on October 3, Elite announced that they acquired FWBS, developers of MatterCentre and MatterSphere tools with a strong presence in the APAC and EMEA regions.

Well, the legal technology vendors remain on an M&A roll … As of this morning, ADERANT has announced the acquisition of RainMaker Software, financial and practice management software for mid to large sized law firms.

The M&A 'arms' race used to be limited to West (now Thomson Reuters) vs. Lexis, with the occasional eDiscovery vendor thrown in, so this recent trend definitely mixes things up. Add to that, record M&As on the law firm side (Altman Weil just reported a 78% increase from 2010), and this might just be the best time to own a business card and stationary printing business.