Lineal, a legal technology and services company based in Kansas City, Missouri, has acquired Forentec, a Swiss firm that handles eDiscovery, digital forensics, cyber security and open-source intelligence work. The deal was announced on October 14, 2026.
The purchase price and other financial terms were not disclosed. Forentec founder and managing partner Lionel Bloch will stay with the business and join Lineal, along with Forentec's existing team.
The acquisition gives Lineal its own location in Switzerland. Forentec's clients gain access to Lineal's wider eDiscovery, investigations, managed review and AI services, while Lineal's clients can draw on Forentec's forensics, cyber security and intelligence specialists.
What Forentec built
Forentec was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Dübendorf, Switzerland. It started as a digital forensics practice and grew into a team that also covers eDiscovery, cyber security and open-source intelligence, known as OSINT.
Its work includes identifying and preserving digital evidence, eDiscovery and managed document review, responding to cyber incidents, and gathering and analysing intelligence from publicly available sources. Clients include law firms, companies, banks and other financial institutions, insurers and public authorities, typically in investigations, litigation and other matters involving large amounts of data.
The firm employs 28 full-time equivalent staff, according to finews.ch. Lineal has about 290.
"We built Forentec around technical expertise, discretion, and the ability to help clients when the stakes are high," Bloch said. "Joining Lineal allows us to preserve those strengths while giving our clients access to a much broader global organization, additional technology, and expanded eDiscovery and review capabilities. It also creates an opportunity to bring the expertise our team has developed in Switzerland to clients well beyond our home market."
“We built Forentec around technical expertise, discretion, and the ability to help clients when the stakes are high.”
Why Lineal is buying
Lineal was founded in 2009 and provides electronic evidence preservation, data analysis and legal technology services. It is expanding in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and recently appointed David Kern, formerly global head of processing and review management for eDiscovery at UBS in Zurich, as general manager for the region. Its services span eDiscovery, investigations, managed document review and AI tools, which Forentec's Swiss clients will now be able to use.
Kern said Forentec gives Lineal a substantial presence in Switzerland and better support for clients' cross-border investigations, finews.ch reported. Lineal plans to serve clients across the EMEA region from the Swiss site, according to IT Reseller.
"Forentec gives Lineal something much more important than a new dot on the map. It gives us an exceptional team with deep expertise in areas that are increasingly connected to the problems our clients are already asking us to solve," said Major Baisden, Lineal's chief executive. Baisden also pointed to the growing overlap between digital investigations, cyber security and the preservation of electronic evidence, finews.ch reported.
The founder and the funding
Bloch founded Forentec and has led it as managing partner. He will help expand Lineal's cyber security and OSINT capabilities globally, working alongside Forentec's existing team, which Lineal is taking on in full.
No outside funding for Forentec was reported, and none of the announcements named investors. Lineal's own owners were not mentioned. In August 2025 Lineal bought ProFile Discovery, an eDiscovery, computer forensics and trial support provider based in Columbus, Ohio, which eDiscovery Today described as Lineal's first acquisition.
Forensics and eDiscovery converge
Law firms and companies increasingly need the same providers to collect evidence from devices, investigate cyber incidents and review large volumes of documents for litigation and regulators. That has pushed eDiscovery companies to add forensics and cyber skills, often by buying small specialist firms.
Forentec's client list of banks, insurers, law firms and authorities, and its Swiss presence, give Lineal a footing in that market that it would otherwise have had to build itself. Both of Lineal's acquisitions so far have added forensics and cyber incident skills alongside its core eDiscovery business.
