Chapman: big and natural step

Riverview Law is setting up a separate business which will own and exploit the technology built by the alternative business structure over the last three years.

The company will be free to license Riverview’s intellectual property to any third party, including the fixed-fee firm’s competitors.

The first move has been for Riverview itself to launch a range of software modules targeted at in-house legal teams in large organisations.

‘Riverview Law In-house’ packages the firm’s service delivery and operating model into software modules that can be tailored to any organisation. They can be purchased individually or in any combination, and buyers are not required to use Riverview Law as part of the deal.

The initial modules are: Instruction Manager, which helps manage the flow and the triage of matters into the in-house function; Contract Manager, which manages new contract creation from start to finish via multi-language and multi-channels (desktop, tablet, mobile); an analytics model, which provides detailed management information and business insight; Implementation Manager, which supports and drives the set-up and go-live process; and Configuration Manager, which enables in-house control and management of the workflows, processes and reporting.

More modules will be launched in 2015.

Riverview Law chief executive Karl Chapman said that the firm was effectively the so-far unnamed technology business’s first customer, with the modules having been built on the technology that it now owns.

He said the platform could be used across many sectors; this was Riverview applying it to the law and there were customers already using some of the modules.

A management team is being recruited to drive forward global sales of the technology, he added, and it was not impossible that “in the right hands”, the technology business could be bigger than Riverview Law in five years’ time, Mr Chapman said.

He explained: “Creating a technology business is a big and natural step for Riverview Law. We use technology widely in our business. It is a core part of our operating model and mind-set. However, creating a global technology business requires both a different business model and different skills. By establishing this as a separate business, the board now has maximum flexibility for how it develops, manages and grows this area of our activity.”

He continued that the launch of the modules came from GCs and legal teams asking if they could license Riverview’s technology for their internal use.

“Now they can. The great thing is that our technology is proven and low risk because our teams use the same model to deliver our managed service solutions successfully to existing customers globally.

“We have always understood the need to combine people, processes and technology effectively. Our service delivery model is built on this approach and so are these modules.”