Six new BigLaw firms sign up to Reynen Court

In a model that will ultimately succeed or fail on the number of law firms backing it, six more leading law firms have joined Reynen Court to support the development and launch of its services automation platform. The six new members are Cleary Gottlieb; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Debevoise & Plimpton; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Slaughter and May and Weil Gotshal & Manges.

They bring the number of firms backing the platform that we christened the app store for legal to 18. Co-chairs Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance have been involved from the outset alongside Paul Weiss (vice chair); Covington; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Gibson Dunn; Linklaters; Orrick; Ropes & Gray; Skadden Arps; and White & Case. As we first revealed in January, Latham and Clifford Chance have each injected £2m in Series A funding.

Founded by former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate Andrew Klein and formally launched at the end of September, Reynen Court will audit vendors and offer containerised cloud applications, enabling firms to buy and run the application in their preferred environment.

Instead of individual IT directors having to audit and worry about the security of new providers, that will become Reynen Court’s job, with the idea that it becomes an official legal app store that, once established, clients can give their blanket approval to. This sort of store will also help law firms to optimise their costs by enabling them to use applications as they need them.

The ultimate objective is that firms will be able to say they will not work with startups unless it is through Reynen Court.

Klein commented: “We are on target to launch a first version of our platform in the third quarter 2019 and more than 70 third party application developers are currently working towards integrating products into our solutions store. Today, we welcome six additional firms to the consortium which is helping us define platform requirements and develop new standards for application vendors. The firms, vendors and Reynen Court collectively aim to massively accelerate the pace of technology adoption and business transformation in the industry.”