The world’s first open industry platform for lawyers launches

Lupl is a first-in-kind partnership between major global companies and law firms. The platform has commenced private beta testing under lockdown conditions and promises to transform the ways in which lawyers work. All corporate legal departments and law firms worldwide can use Lupl; any technology provider can integrate with it via open APIs.

A group of leading law firms and corporations have come together to support the development of Lupl, the world’s first open industry platform for legal matters. The venture represents more than 12 months of work with in-house and private practice lawyers and industry experts to solve shared frustrations relating to the handling of legal matters.

Together, the group represents 10,000+ lawyers in 100+ jurisdictions. Lupl has been formed as an independent corporation to develop, own and operate the open industry technology platform.

Transparency and cooperation

It is being incubated through its development by a trio of international law firms, CMS, Cooley and Rajah & Tann Asia, working with input from an advisory board of 16 leading in-house lawyers from blue chip multinationals through to the world’s fastest growing tech companies. The wider law firm testing group includes Slaughter and May, Corrs Chambers Westgarth in Australia, Khaitan & Co in India and One Essex Court, a leading barristers’ chambers in London.

Together, they are supporting the development of Lupl with the goal of synchronizing everything that goes into a legal matter – including people, documents, information, communications and technology applications – in a single secure space, empowering lawyers and legal departments to work together on complex, high-stakes legal matters in a better and more efficient way.

Michelle Fang, Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Turo and Corporate Counsel’s General Counsel of the Year, said: “Lawyers today have a critical role to play at the front lines of business. But technology tools for lawyers often seem to hold them back rather than empower them. Lupl’s open industry platform has the potential to enhance transparency and collaboration and deliver better, more modern ways of working within our department, with other business functions, and with law firms.”

Open approach

An open approach means any legal department and law firm will be able to use Lupl, and any technology provider will be able to integrate with it via open APIs.

Matt Pollins, Chief Commercial Officer of Lupl, added: “When we began work on Lupl, our goal was to give lawyers real-time, 360 visibility across their matters, whether they’re at their desk, at home, or on the go. We knew the demand for a tool like this was coming because of the shift towards distributed teams and mobile working but the crisis has accelerated that shift far quicker than we could ever have imagined.”

The platform itself is the result of thousands of hours of input from legal professionals at all levels, across sectors as diverse as telecoms, financial services, technology, energy and natural resources, all around the world.

Lupl has been developed with further support and guidance from Heidi Gardner PhD, Faculty Chair and Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, the author of “Smart Collaboration” and the upcoming “Smart Collaboration for In-House Legal Teams”, who is a world-leading expert on workplace collaboration trends.

Designed for usage by both law firms and legal departments alike, the platform will continue to operate in private beta for several months ahead of a wider public release later in the year or early 2021. In support of the beta version going live, the company has also launched a website to set out its long-term vision and objectives.

For further information, please contact hello@lupl.com