Quorum makes acquisition to improve service quality and broaden range

Quorum Litigation Services' acquisition of Information Scanning Services (ISS) in Aldershot was not just a case of buying a company because it liked its service.

Quorum UK director Kelvin McGregor-Alcorn says the purchasing of ISS from the Headway Technology group is part of a strategy to broaden the US group's range of services, both to the legal profession and more widely in the UK and Europe. Up to now, Quorum has only been offering litigation support services in the UK.

ISS, renamed Quorum Information Services (QIS), provides paper and microfilm scanning, image-based indexing and optical character recognition. The aim is to offer the profession data capture services for its legal back-up filing requirements. "This area is not litigation-led," says McGregor

Alcorn. But Quorum sees a big market here and in Europe.

The US group set up litigation support operations in the UK in 1992 and had found problems when having to use UK scanning services suppliers. It found that no UK bureau had experience with the special needs of litigation. They were not able to meet the time or the quality requirements, says McGregor-Alcorn.

"But when working with the Headway company, we found the commitment to the client and to quality."

QIS currently has around 10 employees but that is expected to at least double in the next year under the expansion plans. Its general manager Malcolm Orchard sees the work for the legal sector increasing, but that it will only account for perhaps 15 per cent of the expanded business.