Japan's largest law firm invests in Reynen Court

Australasia News

23
Nov
2020

Editor

Nishimura & Asahi, the largest law firm in Japan, has joined Clifford Chance, Latham & Watkins and Orrick as an investor in Reynen Court. The investment is an extension of the recently completed $4.5 million funding round led by global venture capital firm Ventech which followed the company's initial $10 million financing secured in 2019.

Founded in 2018 with wide support from a consortium of nineteen leading global law firms, Reynen Court has built and launched a platform - akin to an app store for legal technology - that makes it fast, easy and secure for law firms and in-house legal departments to discover, test, adopt and manage Artificial Intelligence, Smart Contracts and other new technologies.  Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance serve as co-chairs of the consortium. Nearly two hundred third-party application vendors are actively engaged with Reynen Court, with more than a hundred already under contract and currently present or working towards participation in the Reynen Court solution store.

"We are extremely proud to announce that Nishimura & Asahi is particpating in our current round of funding and as a new member of our consortium," commented Reynen Court founder and CEO Andrew D Klein.  "This exciting relationship clearly points to the significant role our platform can play in speeding the spread of legal technology across borders. Law is certainly a global industry and the drive to modernize while keeping content secure and operations stable is as challenging for firms in Japan as it is for firms headquartered in the United States or the United Kingdom."

"This ground-breaking platform allows us to run cloud-based applications within private clouds under our own control -- thus giving us access to modern software solutions without requiring that we sacrifice security or stability," added Hajime Ueno, a Partner and CTO of Tokyo based Nishimura & Asahi.  "The platform also promises to take substantial time and costs out of our procurement and deployment processes, with the content rich solution store and tools for effortlessly testing applications.  This factors well into our strategy of using best-in-class technology to enhance our legal service delivery. The work Reynen Court is doing to drive greater interoperability between and among third-party applications is also extremely compelling, as it opens up new possibilities to harness data, ultimately providing us with better intelligence for our clients.  We will also be working with Reynen Court to standardize a joint approach to helping vendors localize their products for the Japanese and Asian markets.  We look forward to actively joining in this exciting and now truly global collaboration."