Here's why one of the largest law firms in the world branched out into making tools to help its lawyers build apps with no code
- Norton Rose Fulbright Canada - a subsidiary of Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the largest law firms in the world - recently moved into the software industry with a tool that can help its lawyers build simple apps without needing to code.
- The law firm has created a tool that can help its lawyers build apps to help their clients, without needing to know how to code.
- The platform can build apps to help do things like online databases to help clients figure out if they're in compliance with regulations or automate searches for trademarks- tasks that would otherwise take a lot of time.
- The market for low code/no code tools is expected to worth $52 billion by 2024, as the need for software to help rises beyond the number of developers available to build those type of tools.
- Sukesh Kamra, the firm's national director of knowledge and innovation said his goal with this no code platform is to make the firm a leader in this type of legal technology.
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Companies are always looking for ways to work faster and more efficiently, even in industries we think of as slow to adopt new technologies - like, for example, the legal profession.
Norton Rose Fulbright Canada, the massive international law firm's local subsidiary, however, has taken a big step towards not only modernization, but also in getting ahead of the next big thing.
Specifically, it recently introduced NRF Transform NCode, a new tool to help its employees make simple apps that can handle complex legal queries, with no coding required. The tool is meant to help the firm's lawyers better respond to client questions around issues like regulatory compliance, trademark issues, worker's compensation, and so on.
Sukesh Kamra, NRF Canada's national director of knowledge and innovation, said that while there are some tools that can help with these tasks, they're often not very effective or useful for lawyers.
"Oftentimes we're finding that there's a gap between the use case and the requirements...and we wanted to try to address that gap by coming up with a platform that could respond to the intricate details of the requirements that both our clients externally are interested in as well as our lawyers internally in order to to efficiently expedite processes," Kamra told Business Insider.
The NRF tool itself isn't available for outside law firms to use (at least not yet), but it does make four very specific apps that it built on the platform available to its clients. One, for example helps its clients assess workplace injuries and required next steps; another walks through the steps of checking if a worker qualifies as a contractor, legally speaking.
NRF's move is well-timed, as the legal industry looks to be one of the many that will be hit by what some expect to be a coming developer shortage. Companies like Microsoft and Google are all racing to establish themselves in this so-called low-code/no-code market, expected to be worth $52 billion by 2024, as the need for software to help companies undergo digital transformation rises beyond the number of developers available to build those type of tools.
'Coders and lawyers at the same time'
While Kamra was the executive mastermind behind the product, Al Hounsell, Norton Rose's senior innovation lawyer, built the product itself with a team of five developers. As someone with experience in both web development and practicing law, Hounsell was in a unique position to see both sides of the equation.
"We've got people on our team that had a very rare and unique skill set. We've got people on the team who are coders and lawyers at the same time," Kamra said.
Hounsell said the firm started seeing a lot of technical requests from clients that were not possible for the firm's IT department to handle. These were things like helping a company comply with new regulations or making a chatbot to answer legal questions - all things to help with delivering legal services to the firm's clients.
In order to answer these client requests in a cost effective way, the firm realized it had to build its own tool. And Hounsell said as they started looking at the requests, they noticed patterns and were able to build their platform to serve those purposes. It was only after that that the firm realized they could use the no code tool to automate some of their internal tasks as well.
Creatures of habit
Kamra said that it took some work to make NRF Transform NCode something lawyers might actually use.
He says that lawyers are generally creatures of habit, and so Hounsell and his developer team had to get very familiar with the apps and data that they already used in their day-to-day work. Law firms are rarely keen to change their workflow, he said, so the new app-building tool would have to integrate with their existing systems.
"If you truly want adoption rate to be high, particularly on a local platform like NCode, you have to embed anything you build in the daily workflow of that person, sometimes the challenge can be trying to understand that workflow," Kamra said.
The result is, the platform can build a useful but simple app within a few hours. These can be for things like creating online databases to help clients figure out if they're in compliance with regulations or automate searches for trademarks. The firm has also used the platform to automate certain processes for its lawyers, like filling out and submitting forms.
The goal is to make the firm a leader in this type of legal technology, Kamra said.
"I want us at Norton Rose Fulbright to be leaders in truly leveraging legal technology and innovation and solving business pain points for clients."
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