Reynen Court - the global platform accelerating the deployment of legal technology in law firms - and Citizen Development platform Betty Blocks join forces in a newly announced partnership. The aim is to enable law firms and corporate legal departments to build their own software solutions using the Betty Blocks platform, deployed through Reynen Court.
Reynen Court created a Solution Store for legal technology, which works exactly like the App Store that we’re all familiar with. “With Reynen Court, law firms can quickly find, securely test, deploy and strategically manage legal tech tools,” Christian Lang, Head of Strategy at Reynen Court, explains. Citizen Development platform Betty Blocks enables anyone with little to no coding skills to build their own software solutions. Recently, the platform was added to the Reynen Court Solution Store. “The listing of Betty Blocks has just gone live, so our platform users can learn about the power of the Betty Blocks platform as of today, and they will be able to deploy and use it through the Reynen Court platform early in the new year,” Lang states.
Lang and his team heard about Betty Blocks very early on. One of their initial investors was Clifford Chance, a big user of Betty Blocks. They brought it to their attention. “Six months ago, right about the time our platform was reaching a new level of production-grade maturity, we began hearing a strong desire from our users to move beyond the deployment of off-the-shelf existing solutions into a world where they can build the applications they need themselves. Based on our research, we knew Betty Blocks would be a perfect fit for that aspiration – not only because it provides the best-in-class toolset, but because the company has an operational maturity that many legal technology vendors are currently lacking.”
A platform on a platform
It will be interesting to see what law firms develop with the Betty Blocks platform. Lang expects there will be some great use cases around decision automation and helping people with basic legal advice through an application. “Some lawyers might worry about cannibalizing their business, but history shows it’s exactly the opposite. By delighting customers with more user-friendly and timely services, lawyers generate more business, not less. Moreover, they can begin offering services that previously weren’t feasible or scalable through a traditional service-delivery model or automate work that keeps them from investing their time on the most high-value tasks – such as focusing face-to-face time on deep counsel, rather than data collection. Supporting firms with the right tools and automation helps them win, grow, and build trust within client relationships,” he states.
“Another example might be a lawyer who needs a tech tool for a case. It usually takes ages to thoroughly research existing tools on the market and choose the one that meets most needs and security requirements. By deploying Betty Blocks through Reynen Court, they can build exactly what they need - securely and a lot faster,” Lang explains. “With this partnership, we’re putting a platform on a platform. I am excited to see to what extent Betty Blocks users in law firms will publish the apps they built onto the Reynen Court Solution tore and sell it on.”
Jeroen Versteijne, Legal Innovation Expert at Betty Blocks, sees an enormous development in the legal space in the field of innovation, digital transformation, and application development. “Leading law firms already use the Betty Blocks platform to build their own software solutions in a safe and governed way. With our new partnership with Reynen Court, law firms can build software solutions using the Betty Blocks platform, deployed through the Reynen Court platform. This way they reap the benefits of Betty Blocks’ ability to empower citizen development, within an environment that is optimized for and trusted by the industry.”
Removing barriers in legal tech adoption
Reynen Court was originally founded with the support of nineteen, by now twenty, of the world’s biggest and best law firms, including some of Betty Blocks’ customers. Lang explains: “They were all facing the same challenges: it took too much time and resources to evaluate technologies. Those firms helped us define requirements for what a platform layer would need to look like in order to get rid of those barriers, deploy technologies in an efficient and secure way and ultimately manage it effectively – as opposed to having your strategy dictated to you, caused by constraints and security obstacles. We offer an objective description of all applications in our Solution Store and thoroughly test them on security requirements, the process of implementation, et cetera. In short, Reynen Court facilitates both the ‘app store’ experience as well as the pipes and plumbing behind it to make that actually work.”
