Legal tech ‘app store’ Reynen Court has launched a new wave of collaboration with the inhouse world that will see twenty corporate law departments forming a consortium with the company.
Half of the participants are large, global financial institutions, including Barclays, BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
The remainder of the group represent a cross section of large companies, including Cisco and Intel (and two other of the top twenty US technology companies measured by market capitalisation) as well as leaders in telecommunications, travel, media, manufacturing and other important sectors.
The new group has come together as a separate consortium – i.e. in addition to the consortium of large law firms that already back the platform. They will meet regularly with Reynen Court, as well as from time to time, jointly with Reynen Court’s law firm consortium.
The stated aim for the inhouse collaboration body is identical to that of the initial group: to advance the development of standards designed to speed the legal industry’s adoption of legal technology.
Reynen Court founder and CEO, Andrew Klein, said in a statement: ‘We are driven by the opportunity to establish clear standards for the legal technology sector. Since the legal services market is triangular – defined by law firms, legal departments and the vendors of technology – it has always been our plan and ambition to bring into collaboration the in-house legal departments. We are proud today to share the progress we have made in broadening our scope.’
Is this a big deal? Well, it further cements the platform’s position as the go-to place to procure legal tech and will help those vendors that focus on the corporate world – of which there are a growing number.
As to what the consortium members think, here’s a collection of views.
‘We are thrilled to join Reynen Court and the in-house counsel consortium. This group of industry leading companies will facilitate dialogue as the legal industry attempts to accelerate the adoption of new technologies in an evolving operating environment,’ said, Thomas Barothy, General Counsel COO at UBS.
‘We are very happy to join Reynen Court and its law firm and legal department consortium members in working to further develop and promote standards for legal technology. Reducing the time and cost involved in sourcing, testing and safely deploying new cloud-based solutions is an important objective for our internal legal teams and for firms providing services to us. We look forward to working with this extraordinary group of industry leaders to help accelerate business transformation for both the buyers and sellers of legal technology,’ said Max Iori, Managing Director and Global Head of Technology and Data Law at Morgan Stanley
And, Bill Deckelman, EVP and General Counsel at DXC Technology, added: ‘Now in our fifth year of a digital transformation journey, DXC Legal continues to explore the boundaries of digital technology adoption to deliver impactful value to business. We are very pleased to join the in-house consortium of Reynen Court and to be part of this cutting-edge initiative to accelerate AI and other enabling digital technologies for the legal sector.’
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Artificial Lawyer also recently reported on how Reynen Court is creating a set of model contracts to provide a more standardised approach to the procurement of legal tech.