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In January, consultancy PwC's legal arm made waves by teaming up with technology firm BRYTER to allow lawyers to build their own apps through a "no code" automation tool. Now, BRYTER has secured funding to expand its building platform vision even further.

BRYTER announced yesterday that it has secured $16 million in Series A funding in a round led by Dawn Capital and Accel, which led its seed round in 2019. BRYTER currently operates offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and London, and is actively pursuing expansion in the U.S. BRYTER CEO and co-founder Michael Grupp told Legaltech News via email that he wants to open a New York City office that includes a dedicated customer success team, as well as use the funding to expand the product and customer support.

Earlier this week, BRYTER also announced the release of its BRYTER Open program as well, giving free access to a community version of its application to academics, NGOs, and individuals.

BRYTER's core platform provides a way for business professionals, including lawyers, to build their own applications using the program's interface. Among the business applications that can be created using BRYTER's tools and templates, the company said, are virtual assistants, chatbots, self-servicing applications and other intelligent automation tools. And most of these builds are done by people who don't know how to code, Grupp explained.

"For us, no-code means that you do not need to know coding syntax, you do not need to think of yourself as a developer," he said. "Of course, it is helpful to know how a database works and what a condition is, but the good thing about BRYTER is that most users really learn this using the platform."

BRYTER markets its product to a wide range of businesses, with clients ranging from retail such as McDonald's to health care enterprises to professional services organizations such as the Big 4 consultancies. But in looking at expansion opportunities, legal and its similar services have become a particularly emergent market for these no-code tools, Grupp noted, especially in the U.S.

"Like in Europe, we are working with law firms, legal departments and compliance units in the U.S. a lot," he explained. "But there are several areas of business knowledge that are very comparable to legal and compliance: procurement, quality control, administration."

In the legal market, there has been an increased emphasis in legal departments and law firms alike building their own tools. And a platform such as his taps into that burgeoning desire, Grupp added.

"As a law firm, auditing firm or consultancy, it is more interesting to use solutions that allow you to augment billings, to enlarge the portfolio and to recuperate for costs immediately. Especially the legal and compliance professions are semantically complex, and KPIs and defined processes are still recent," Grupp said. "So it is hard to measure ROI in solutions that promise cost savings. BRYTER allows law firms and consultants to build and sell digital applications; that made it very interesting."