BRYTER, the no-code automation platform, has hired Joanna Sidhu, a former associate at Ashurst, and most recently Head of Growth at Legl, to manage its fast-growing Open community for testing and experimentation at universities and non-profits.
CEO, Michael Grupp, told Artificial Lawyer that the initial idea had been to create a community in the same way that most enterprise software companies do. The community can then explore what Bryter can do in ways that many lawyers or tech professionals may not have the time to.
‘We don’t see Bryter Open as a sales mechanism. [The reason why we are doing this is because] if we sell to companies it’s a top down decision made by one key decision maker. Bryter is then rolled out for a specific project with a clear use case,’ he explained.
‘In a law firm lawyers are on the billable hour and they are not playing around with the technology,’ he added. ‘And that is why we created this sandbox community.’
I.e. although the company has a growing list of clients using the no-code tech around the world for an increasing number of uses, the buyers are not spending a huge amount of time just experimenting.
The Open community allows this to happen in a positive way that also brings value to the people doing the experimenting.
Grupp added that one of Sidhu’s roles, in addition to working with the community, is to keep track of the many new creations and use cases they come up with. Open will also be providing training to the community.
Another key reason for Sidhu’s hire is just how rapidly the Open community has grown. Around 200 organisations have applied so far for free access, and the company has agreed to work with 100, with around 50 already fully signed up.
As one would expect, managing connections with such a large community, which the company wants to engage closely with, is going to be a full-time job.
Sidhu (pictured above) commented: ‘I believe in the potential for technology to level the playing field. Bryter is leading the way with its no-code platform. When non-profits, grass root organisations and academic institutions have access to this incredibly powerful technology, the potential for change is huge.
‘I am delighted to be joining Bryter to lead the global rollout of the community platform and to give experts access to technology tools to empower their users with knowledge at scale.’
All in all a win/win for everyone involved. The tech company gets to see what its tech can do when literally hundreds of inquisitive minds explore what is possible; the students get a chance to make use of no-code technology to build legal tech and social justice applications that may be useful to them later in their careers; and in the longer term the community may generate people who decide they want to be legal engineers.
Also, the non-profits and NGOs that get involved also have a chance to build applications for free that may otherwise have been too expensive to develop or purchase off the shelf.
Other legal tech companies have also done this. For example, Neota Logic, also a no-code/low-code platform, has been doing this type of community work with universities for several years already. And perhaps no-code tech, due to the nature of the intuitive technology, is well-suited to this type of project that does not require specialist skills beforehand.