mmadigital was launched in 2016 and uses proprietary technology to source and qualify personal injury and clinical negligence leads for UK law firms. It currently boasts more than 70 law firm clients. This new investment comes as it looks to further its technology and infrastructure investment and boost its market position through acquisitions and organic growth.
Since its founding, Rockpool Investments has provided equity and loan financing to SMEs in the UK and has invested more than £500 million into the UK private equity market. By funding mmadigital, Rockpool makes its first investment in the legal services market.
onefourzero advised Rockpool on the investment.
Lawyer Monthly had the pleasure to speak with Jennifer McNamara at onefourzero to give us some further insight into this transaction:
Can you tell us any more about onefourzero and their role in this investment?
onefourzero provides data-led commercial due diligence. Drawing on a broad range of best-in-class datasets, combined and analysed using proprietary tools and methodologies, onefourzero provided a view on market size, share and growth, alongside a commercial assessment of the target asset and recommendations for post-sale growth.
What specialised skills did the onefourzero team bring to the deal?
onefourzero specialises in using myriad, complex data sets robustly triangulated to answer commercial questions. In this case, we combined internal data from MMA with external datasets to understand the broader market and the asset’s performance. By understanding the entire landscape, onefourzero can make post-acquisition growth recommendations with a basis in absolute growth headroom. While these methodologies can be applied to online and offline businesses, the wealth of data available and the in-house digital expertise was a natural fit for this transaction.
onefourzero specialises in using myriad, complex data sets robustly triangulated to answer commercial questions.
Were any difficulties encountered during the transaction? How were they overcome?
The digital landscape in the legal sector is particularly complex due to restrictions on advertising in some areas. There is the presence of online-only / virtual providers alongside traditional firms with varying levels of an online presence. Consumer (e.g, search) behaviours also needed to be considered as they straddle sourcing of online and offline providers. By creating an image of the audience using digital activity as a proxy, onefourzero isolated the most relevant audiences and channels to assess the business fairly. onefourzero could then evaluate the effectiveness in delivering leads based upon the true available market drawn from the data. It also helped to understand the sectors’ overall growth trajectory to provide reassurance to our client.
