Forty-nine of iManage's 50 biggest customers were law and professional service firms. Its client list read like a who's who of the legal world: Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Sidley & Austin, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Paul, Weiss. The company sold software that kept a firm's documents in order and let lawyers find them fast. In November 1999 it went public pitching that same tool to every company doing business on the web.

NetRight, Then iManage

The company was founded in Illinois in October 1995 as NetRight Technologies and shipped its first product a year later. Mahmood Panjwani ran it as chief executive, and Rafiq Mohammadi was chief technology officer. Its software pulled text, graphics, audio and data into one managed library on the web. By September 1999, 81 percent of its customers were law or professional service firms. The bet was that lawyers' document problem was every company's problem.

Eleven Dollars and a Long Way Home

iManage priced at $11 a share in November 1999 and listed on Nasdaq as IMAN. In 2003 it merged with Interwoven, a content management company. Autonomy bought Interwoven in 2009, and HP bought Autonomy in 2011. In 2015 iManage's leaders bought the business back from HP. It runs today as a private company focused on documents for law firms and other professionals.

Cover: A defence lawyer at the Court of Arbitration discussing business at his usual office premises, plate 27 from Les Gens De Justice, Honoré-Victorin Daumier. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a lawyer at work (legal documents).