iManage

iManage is a document, email and knowledge management software company founded in Chicago in 1995 by Neil Araujo and Rafiq Mohammadi. After a decade inside larger technology groups, its management team bought the business back in 2015, and it has been privately held and founder led since. Neil Araujo remains chief executive.

The company went public in 1999, was acquired by Interwoven in 2003, moved to Autonomy in 2009 and then to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 before the 2015 buyout returned it to independence. Since then it has shifted its law firm and corporate customers to a cloud service, bought RAVN Systems for AI document understanding and Closing Folders for transaction management, took a minority growth investment from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities in April 2023, and released a next-generation platform for AI workloads in 2026.

iManage at a glance:

• Founded: Founded in 1995 in Chicago by Neil Araujo and Rafiq Mohammadi, with Araujo leading the company again after the 2015 buyout from HP.
• Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois, with development and support centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and Australia.
• Ownership: Privately held and management led since the 2015 buyout, with Bain Capital Tech Opportunities holding a minority stake acquired in April 2023.
• Legal Technology Portfolio: Sells iManage Work, listed in this directory, within a wider platform spanning security and governance, knowledge search and transaction management.
• Market Focus: Serves law firms, corporate legal departments, accounting and financial services firms in more than 65 countries, selling to both firms and in-house teams.

What legal teams should know: iManage is the incumbent document system across much of the legal market, so in-house teams often encounter it through outside counsel before adopting it themselves. Deployments are usually delivered by certified partners rather than the vendor, which makes partner selection as important as the software decision. Ownership is stable, with founders in place and a minority financial investor.