‘Most user-friendly tool’: Pinsent Masons’ tech consultant on building with Josef and the DBP

We spoke with multinational law firm Pinsent Masons’ Technology Consultant Chris Green about what it was like doing Josef’s Designer & Builder Program, and the agreement generation bot he built!

You can sign up here for the next intake of our program to build a bot while learning crucial legaltech and design thinking skills – for free.

Why did you sign up to the Designer & Builder Program? 

I signed up to the program because I was interested in learning more about how Josef could be used as a technology to solve problems. As a firm, we are moving forward with our strategy to introduce more non-IT-expert development opportunities and low-code/no-code platforms. 

Whilst starting a project from scratch in a new platform can sometimes feel daunting, I thought the approach of working through the program would provide structure and support. I was also keen to hear feedback from the Josef team on my bot including on whether there were better ways of implementing things or improvements that could be made.

What did you learn from the Designer & Builder Program?

I learnt a great deal from the program. It encourages you to think differently about a problem and break it down into its component pieces. Joining these components into a logical progression that solves the challenge overall teaches you a lot.

The program encourages you to take a step back at the start of the project and map out your idea and potential flow. This is always key and the program reinforced the importance of this approach. It also highlighted the importance of an iterative approach to design: it doesn’t need to be perfect in the first build as you can always test, improve and rebuild later.

Tell us all about the bot you built!

My bot generates a professional event sponsorship agreement. This agreement is used by HR and commercial teams within companies to provide sponsorship to events for their professional colleagues outside of the company.

For example, a company might reimburse the cost of the event registration fee, pay for accommodation and travel expenses, as well as food.

This type of document is relatively high volume but low complexity making it an ideal use case and starter project for the program.

The bot first collects information about the HR or commercial users including their name and contact details and then the same for the professional who is being sponsored. It then asks a series of questions about the event and whether specific elements will be sponsored and, if so, their amount and nature. It also allows a choice of languages for the document to be generated. When the questions are completed the automated documents are generated using the relevant information and available for download. The documents are also emailed to the user for them to use with the professional and keep on file once executed.

What would you say to encourage someone thinking about doing the Designer & Builder Program? 

I would definitely encourage anyone to take part in the program. It was great to learn in a flexible way with the support of the Josef team for questions and feedback. 

I liked the way the course was broken down into manageable steps and you were always aware of your progress throughout the program. Josef is a great example of a no-code platform that can be used by anyone with no coding or technical knowledge which really opens up possibilities and opportunities. I would encourage anyone who believes they don’t have technology skills or the right mindset to give it a go and see what you learn.

Overall, I was impressed with how quickly Josef allowed me to design, build and launch an entirely new tool from start to finish. Having designed similar tools in other platforms I would say Josef was the most intuitive and user friendly.