Lineal buys Swiss forensics and eDiscovery firm Forentec

Lineal buys Swiss forensics and eDiscovery firm Forentec

14 October 2026: Lineal, a legal technology and eDiscovery company based in Kansas City, Missouri, has acquired Forentec, a Swiss firm that handles digital forensics, eDiscovery, cyber security and open-source intelligence work for law firms, banks, insurers and public authorities. The deal gives Lineal its first base in Switzerland. Neither company disclosed the price.

Not yet independently verified. Neither side states a price, and we found no statement on Forentec's own site. Lineal announced the acquisition as done but gives no closing date. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Who Forentec serves

Forentec was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Dübendorf, near Zurich. It began as a digital forensics practice and grew into a team covering eDiscovery, forensics, cyber incident work and OSINT, which means investigation drawn from public sources. Its clients are corporations, law firms, financial institutions, insurers and public authorities, typically in investigations, litigation and cyber incidents where large volumes of data have to be identified, preserved and analysed.

Lionel Bloch, Forentec's founder and managing partner, stays with the business and joins Lineal along with the existing team. "Joining Lineal allows us to preserve those strengths while giving our clients access to a much broader global organization," he said.

What Lineal adds

Lineal, established in 2009, sells eDiscovery services, managed document review and its own AI review suite, AmplifyAI. Under the deal Forentec's clients gain access to that review and eDiscovery capacity, while Lineal can offer Forentec's forensics, cyber security and OSINT skills to its clients elsewhere.

"Forentec gives Lineal something much more important than a new dot on the map," said Major Baisden, Lineal's chief executive, adding that eDiscovery, forensics, cyber security and intelligence work increasingly overlap.

A Swiss push led by a former UBS hand

The acquisition follows Lineal's appointment of David Kern as general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Kern was previously global head of processing and review management for eDiscovery at UBS in Zurich. Switzerland matters in this work because banking secrecy and data protection rules often require evidence to be processed in the country, which favours providers with local teams and infrastructure.

For Forentec's existing clients, the practical questions are where their data will be hosted and processed after the change of owner, and whether engagement terms move to Lineal's paper. Lineal's announcement does not address either.

Our legal document management software category lists 11 products and our legal case management software category eight; we do not yet list either company.

Company profile on TrustList: Lineal

Sources

• Lineal: Lineal Acquires Forentec, Expanding Global Investigations and Cyber Capabilities, 14 October 2026
• Netzwoche: US-Legal-Tech-Anbieter Lineal übernimmt Schweizer Forentec (in German), 15 October 2026