Reynen Court Beta Launch; Ayfie Bags $10m + Bit More on Litera/Doxly

Reynen Court announces Beta launch of ‘App Store’ legal tech platform

Reynen Court has announced the Beta release of its legal tech platform in an important landmark for the ‘App Store’-style offering.

The idea is that firms can make direct use of a range of applications that work via the Reynen Court platform with issues such as security standards all taken care of. The platform will also provide advanced metrics to improve predictability of IT software and infrastructure expenditure.

Reynen Court, which was established last year with broad support from a consortium of nineteen global law firms, said a team comprising engineers and product managers have now built the platform, and over ninety third-party application vendors have agreed to make their solutions available through the platform.

Security experts have also tested vendors and applications and curated content for the solution store, it added.

Sharath Beedu, VP of Software Products at Elevate, one of the businesses whose products will be available on the new platform (see below), described it as a private ‘app store’ where products are pre-packaged for easy installation within each firm’s respective IT environment.

‘This enables firms to try new systems without using third-party cloud environments, which is prohibited by many of their clients,’ he explained.

‘We chose to work with Reynen Court because their model helps law firms evaluate and implement new software.’

Andrew Klein, founder and CEO of Reynen Court, said it has been an ‘intensive’ year of development, and that the platform is now ready for active deployment.

‘First to support us during our Beta launch are five of the world’s leading law firms: Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance, co-chairs of the consortium and investors in Reynen Court; Paul Weiss, vice chair of the consortium; White & Case; and Orrick. We value their collective experience, resources, dynamism and strong leadership,’ Klein said.

Officials at participating law firms emphasised the potential benefit to clients, with Wendy Butler Curtis, Chief Innovation Officer at Orrick, saying: ‘We’re excited to serve as launch partners for this transformational platform that will make it easier for clients and law firms to collaborate in using the exciting technologies on the market and under development today.’

White & Case Chief Information Officer, Tony Cordeiro, commented: ‘Our rapid adoption of stable, secure and functionally rich applications will enable our lawyers to deliver better comprehensive service to our clients. This relentless focus on our client underpins all we do and we believe Reynen Court is one of those key partners to help us realise that.’

Once the Beta launches are satisfactorily executed, Reynen plans to launch full deployments later this year with additional firms, including members of its consortium, as well as with corporate legal departments.

Reynen Court will be offering a wide range of tech applications. For example, one company to announce its participation is Elevate, which will provide three tech products that include: legal AI and document analytics tool kit ContraxSuite, legal project management app Cael Project, and paperless pro forma billing app Cael BillPrep.

One Reynen Court member firm, Clifford Chance, recently selected ContraxSuite to power its new data lab.

(By Irene Madongo)

AI Doc Review Company Ayfie Raises $10 million

Ayfie Group, which is focused on text analytics solutions, has announced a $10m funding round to accelerate its growth and extend its product offerings. This is the second investment round after the initial $8m funding in June 2017.

Interestingly, the company has not named who the investors are. But, back in 2017 the lead investor was VirtualWorks Group based in Norway, where the company has historical roots.

The company said the funding will be invested in growing the North American commercial team in the new Denver office and raising Ayfie’s global market awareness with additional marketing and sales activities.

The company will also keep pushing into the legal sector, where it is gaining clients.

Ayfie’s legal offerings include solutions for knowledge discovery, eDiscovery, identification of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and content insights.

Erik Baklid, CEO of Ayfie, said: ‘We are very proud of Ayfie’s excellent development since the initial round of funding. Ayfie is solving problems that other less sophisticated systems cannot. The funding supports with power the achievement of our next business milestones taking full advantage of the momentum we’ve created.’

Litera Bags Doxly

As noted yesterday, Litera has bought deal platform Doxly. This follows the purchase of Workshare. And although which target was next was hard to guess at, that there would be another target was certain.

Litera, which is backed by Hg Capital, is clearly on something of a platform expansion strategy. In May 2019 when Hg stepped in, it was stated: ‘The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand globally.’

Interestingly Litera is something of conglomerate already and the result of several mergers in recent years. It can trace its roots back to the mid-1990s, but seems now to be a different type of venture with global ambitions.

Hg/Litera is also clearly seeking to place the business at the centre of the doc lifecycle and it seems highly likely there will be more acquisitions to come.