If it feels like there's more law firm-developed tech platforms than ever, there's probably a simple reason for that: They're getting easier to design and launch. Just ask Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP), which Thursday announced that the firm's innovative high-volume legal services business BCLP Cubed entered into a partnership with "low-code" software platform Mendix. The partnership will see BCLP Cubed expanding its use of Mendix in the development of legal delivery technology solutions.

To be sure, the firm is not just looking to tap into Mendix's technology. It's also betting that a low-coding platform can foster faster, and more collaborative, technology development. It's a new paradigm separated from how development happened in the not-too-distant past, and with any luck, it just might keep pace with clients' fast-evolving needs.

BCLP Cubed chief technology officer Jody Jansen and the firm's chief innovation officer, Kathryn DeBord, spoke with Legaltech News on why they entered into the partnership, what solutions they already developed using Mendix, and how BCLP tends to compete with alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) for high-volume work.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Legaltech News: What was the impetus behind the partnership with Mendix?

Jody Jansen: The funny thing is, most people think your answer will be the technology aspects of the platform, and don't get me wrong it's a remarkable platform … [but] where the real benefits of the platform comes in is where we start doing collaborative design and collaborative development of our solutions.

In our current process we have weekly show-and-tells, so the team shows to the wider community what they've been building and what the next steps are in the building [process]. So at that point you can see if something is going right or left, if you have to steer it into a different way where it becomes something you originally intended.

In the old days, it could have been months before you saw that first release, just because it took longer to develop. But with using low code ability and modules, you can do that in a week.

Why the need for such rapid development?

I've been in legal technology for 22 years now, and in the beginning of my career it would have been absolutely fine to talk about something for months and develop for months and reiterate for months.

But currently, the world is moving so fast and things change so fast that we as a law firm need to adapt to that, to come up with good solutions to our clients. And you can't do that in the old-style project management, you have to reuse the elements you've already created and do agile development—start small, do small iterations, and grow the product into something you want.

What solutions have you already built with Mendix?

Jansen: We have had Mendix since January and since then we've built two products. The first one is the [Data Subject Access Request] product, and it's solely focused on the streamlining of intake and process reporting and the automatic report generation of that specific type of matter. …

The second is a commercial contracting platform where we aid our clients with a streamlined approach to the intake, negotiation and execution of commercial contracts, as well as delivering key data insights, across their portfolio of commercial contracts.

Why can't legal departments build these solutions themselves?  

Jansen: You still need the expertise of certain people to come up with a great product. When you start to do more difficult things like integrating with your contract analysis tool or integrating with your document automation platform that's where you still need your traditional developers, and that's what we still have.

Having said that, if you just want to create workflow tools in your company then absolutely you should definitely look at those technologies, but if you want to get a bit more complicated then it will probably not work out.

The other thing I would say is if you talk to a lot of the GCs, they don't get a lot of support that we get for our internal IT teams. It's not the core business for their company to support the in-house GC—they have other priorities, and the GC is quite normally left alone without support.

How does BCLP Cubed intend to compete with ALSPs in the market that offer similar services?

Kathryn DeBord: Cubed is kind of that combination, that end-of-end solution of low- to midlevel complexity work with the ability to have easy escalation to the complex advisers when that need occurs.

Managing and trying to splice work-based on complexity isn't as easy as it sounds, it's a lot of shades of gray. That's part of why you'll see some ALSPs developing adjacent law firms: They recognize that you oftentimes need that legal advice that they can't necessarily provide when they are serving their clients on that high volume commodity work.

I do think there is some overlap in the Venn diagram between what we provide and ALSPs provide, [but] I think we are differentiated because we have the reams of complex advisers that ALSPs don't have, and we are a law firm so we can handle that work as it comes to us.

How do you think COVID-19 will impact law firm development efforts?

DeBord: I think even before the coronavirus crisis, the workforce and how legal services were being delivered was being extremely closely scrutinized by law departments and consumers of legal services. And I think with the crisis, that scrutiny is going to be further accelerate.

It's easy to drive change in times of crisis. And we are seeing and will see just a massive acceleration in terms of prioritization of law department scrutiny over how work is getting done, emphasis on data, emphasis on keeping their costs variable, and so looking at how they can do more with less—as always, but that's going to be even more imperative going forward. So I think honestly the recession is going to trigger a lot of innovation.