Dolan Media & law firm form partnership in new company.

Dolan Media (Minneapolis, MN), a provider of online, daily and weekly business and legal publications, including court and commercial newspapers, and business journals in 21 U.S. metro markets, and the law firm of Trott & Trott (Bingham Farms, MI), a firm that provides representation in residential mortgage foreclosures, bankruptcy and related matters, have formed a new company called American Processing Company LLC (APC) to provide mortgage default processing services to law firms in the U.S. The new company is owned by Dolan Media, with equity investments by Trott & Trott partners David Trott, Ellen Coon and Marcy Ford. American Processing has purchased the technology and default processing operations from the Trott law firm, giving it a significant presence in Michigan.

No terms of the deal were given. Dolan president James Dolan said his company had made "a substantial investment" in APC. Dolan Media said that an estimated 800,000 mortgage defaults occur annually in the U.S. and that mortgage lenders usually refer the defaults to specialized law firms and processors. The law firms handle legal asects of the foreclosure and the law firms' internal processors manage the documentation, the auction process, and other details of a foreclosure. Using APC's services, it noted, will allow law firms to outsource the non-legal processing work.

The legal profession is Dolan Media's largest customer group. The company operates Counsel Press (New York), the nation's largest appellate services provider to the legal profession, and its newspaper group is the nation's second-largest publisher of law periodicals, including such titles as "Lawyers Weekly," "Michigan Lawyers Weekly," "Minnesota Lawyer," "Wisconsin Law Journal" and "North Carolina Lawyers Weekly," among others.