Legaltech company Reynen Court has launched a new version of its app store platform that allows law firms and in-house teams to more easily access and manage third-party software applications without stressing their own IT infrastructure.

Reynen Court’s new full-service platform adds to its existing self-managed platform, where users provide their own infrastructure to host the platform and manage all third-party applications in-house. The company – which is backed by law firms including Clifford Chance, Latham & Watkins and Orrick – said the new platform makes it easier for firms and legal departments to source, test and adopt cloud-based legal technology.

Venky Srinivasan, chief evangelist at Reynen Court and former chief technology officer at Canadian law firm Stikeman Elliot, said:  “For law firms and law departments that seek to access a portfolio of modern cloud-based solutions without having to trust their confidential data to a large and growing number of disparate [software-as-a-service] vendors, our full-service model will give them a powerful alternative to the self-managed platform.”

Firms that have signed up to the new full-service platform include Womble Bond Dickinson. 

Bill Koch, chief knowledge officer at Womble Bond Dickinson in the US, said: “Like everyone in our industry, we see no end to the onslaught of new technologies, and Reynen Court will allow us to cut through the noise so that we may rapidly adopt technologies that improve our efficiency and facilitate purposeful interactions with our clients.”

Last October, Reynen Court secured $4.5m in further funding to accelerate its growth, adding to the $3m it raised in January 2020. At the time of the October fundraising, the platform’s ‘solutions store’ provided access to around 200 third-party legaltech applications, with more being added.

Reynen Court backer Orrick earlier this month spun-out its first standalone business from its legaltech innovation hub Orrick Labs. The new company – legal collaboration platform Joinder – aims to make it easier for in-house teams to collaborate with their law firms. Joinder is being led by former Orrick partners Dan Keller and Jim Brock, who will serve as CEO and chief product officer respectively.

A recent report from EY Law and Harvard Law School found that fewer than a third of in-house counsel globally believe they have the technology they need to do their jobs effectively, with nearly all legal departments facing challenges to secure budgets for tech investment.