A More Efficient Way To Manage Multi-jurisdictional Projects

With more than 5,800 lawyers in 84 offices, lawyers at CMS regularly support clients on projects that span multiple jurisdictions. 

Christian Runte, Partner and Co-Head of the CMS Data Protection team, shares his experience of the challenges of managing multi-jurisdictional projects – and how to navigate them through systems like Lupl.

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International work for international clients 

Christian’s team often deals with advice covering multiple legal systems. This is driven by multiple factors, including the increasingly international nature of business and technology – and Germany’s position in the European Union.  

As Christian puts it, “Whoever wants to do business in Europe doesn’t want to do business in only one country, but wants to see it as a market that is 28 countries. You then have to look at 28 countries, for example, versus just one, or it’s even broader than that – it may span the entire globe as well.” 

The challenges of handling these projects in email 

Until now, in international law firms, multi-jurisdictional work has primarily been handled via email.  

Usually, a member of the team will coordinate with multiple local offices or local counsel, gather the advice, and then the final deliverable is prepared for the client. 

The biggest challenge with this email-driven approach is the duplication of effort: 

“Everything you have to do, you have to do, times 28 or even more. So it has to be very well planned, otherwise there’s a lot of work afterwards, trying to fit these pieces together because the client in the end doesn’t want to see this mosaic of different advice.” 

Finding a solution in Lupl 

The team became aware of Lupl’s second-generation platform – and specifically its Workstreams and Forms features, modules designed for coordinating across teams and geographies. 

These features allow users to create local counsel trackers to: 

• automate the gathering of fee quotes, conflicts information and advice from multiple jurisdictions at once; 
• centralize, organize and review the information in dynamic tables; and 
• export the outputs to Word and Excel for external sharing. 

They were drawn to the ease of setup in Lupl and the structure being specifically designed for multi-jurisdictional work.  

One initial concern was whether the recipients of the information requests would use the system – and the team was pleased to find that this worked better than email.  

Looking ahead to the future 

Christian sees a future in which legal work is going to become more and more international, increasing the demand for a solution to coordinate these complex projects: 

“It is something that we simply cannot escape and clients expect us to be more efficient year by year and they also expect us to be more international and to have everything on our radar. That requires more and more coordination…and I think Lupl serves that purpose very well.” 

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No more getting lost in emails, Excel spreadsheets, and Word tables. Keep track of everything easily and in real-time, effortlessly with Lupl!