Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s (BCLP's) high-volume legal delivery service business BCLP Cubed has formed a global technology partnership with Siemens’ app development platform Mendix.

BCLP Cubed had already been using the Mendix low-code platform to help in-house legal teams manage high-volume work relating to commercial contracts, data requests and real estate matters, while also integrating it with other BCLP tech such as document automation and expert systems tools.

Neville Eisenberg, CEO of BCLP Cubed, said: “The Covid-19 crisis and the resulting economic impact worldwide is throwing up huge challenges for our clients. Using Mendix, BCLP Cubed is very rapidly turning around platforms that deliver the new services they require within days or weeks, something which could have taken months using traditional methods.”

BCLP Cubed says client projects benefiting from Mendix include a platform to manage commercial contracts for a major financial institution, and a FTSE 100 company using the platform to manage employee consultations and settlement agreements as part of a business restructuring.

Jody Jansen, BCLP Cubed’s chief technology officer, said: “The partnership with Mendix is a demonstration of our commitment to using best-in-class technology, which includes platforms that have not been created exclusively for the legal industry. Mendix also embeds agile software development methodologies, enabling us to more effectively collaborate with clients and across our teams of lawyers, legal operations specialists and technologists.”

While BCLP continues to push legal tech innovation, the pace of development across the industry remains sluggish. A January report by UK recruiter Hays found law firm investment in digital automation technology is lagging other sectors, with 58% of survey respondents saying they were investing in automation or had plans to do so, compared to an average of 70% across all sectors.

A Thomson Reuters survey earlier this year also found that one in four finance directors at the UK’s top 100 law firms reckon AI and machine learning is among the biggest threats to their profitability.

And in March, Oxford University and the Law Society of England and Wales published a study that showed less than a quarter of UK solicitors use AI-powered legal tech, with only about a fifth of respondents saying their firm captured sufficient data to make the use of tech effective.

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