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The world’s first open industry platform for lawyers launched

Matt Pollins

Matt Pollins

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    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.

    13 May 2020: 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.

    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.”

    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.

    Notes to Editors

    Further comments also at www.lupl.com/home.

    Law Firm Comments

    Adam Ruttenberg, Cooley Partner, Chairman of the firm’s Technology Committee and a leading technology transactions lawyer, added: “As a firm committed to superior quality, service and innovation, we believe that a platform like Lupl is what our lawyers need. The impact of changing demographics and technologies, along with the pressures of instant communication across a variety of modes, makes it increasingly difficult to manage workflow effectively and meet clients’ needs. Especially in light of our recent experience with remote working in a COVID world, we think Lupl is the right answer at the right time.”

    Duncan Weston, Executive Partner of CMS, commented: “At CMS, we’ve always felt that true change in the industry requires a collective shift in mindset to eliminate proprietary closed systems and a reluctance to work together. By supporting the development of Lupl, we hope to set an example for how to bring together a diverse ecosystem of innovators, in-house and private practice lawyers as well as other professionals to create transformational change in our industry for the decades to come.”

    Lee Eng Beng, Senior Counsel, Chairperson of Rajah & Tann Asia, said: “We look forward to that day in the near future when the global legal community will talk and think in terms of pre- and post-Lupl.”

    Legal Department Comments

    Alex Peeke, Head of Legal, Landsec: “I’m excited by the potential of this open industry platform to improve ways of working at the intersection of legal departments, law firms and business teams.”
    Lizette Pérez-Deisboek, General Counsel, Battery Ventures: “One of the issues we have to navigate on large transactions is the sheer volume of unstructured communications. The idea of having a tool to bring all of that together is very exciting.”

    Industry Partner Comments

    Neil Araujo, Chief Executive Officer, iManage Inc, one of several technology partners working with Lupl’s open industry platform, said: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Lupl to enable a seamless integration of iManage Work into Lupl’s open industry platform. We’re excited about the opportunities that this will create for our users. This integration showcases how iManage can be leveraged with other applications in a seamless fashion to meet end user needs and enhance the experience of managing and collaborating on documents.”

    Andy Sparkes, Director of Legal Markets, LexisNexis UK, a leading provider of legal products and solutions, said: “We’re excited to be working with the community of firms and legal departments behind Lupl to explore how we can embed LexisNexis’ legal knowledge solutions into the workflow on this new open industry platform, as part of our mission to help lawyers save time, increase productivity and minimise risk, wherever they are.”

    Alvin Tedjamulia, co-founder and CTO of NetDocuments, added: “NetDocuments supports Lupl’s open industry platform vision. We look forward to integrating our open, cloud-based document management system to Lupl while enabling users of ndThread, our collaboration solution, to seamlessly connect and communicate with colleagues and clients.”

    About Lupl

    Lupl is an open industry platform for legal matters being developed by a group of legal departments and law firms from around the world. Its matter management software brings together all of the people, conversations, documents and data for legal matters in one place.

    For further information, please contact us here.

    About CMS

    Founded in 1999, CMS is a full-service top 10 international law firm, based on the number of lawyers (Am Law 2018 Global 100). With 70+ offices in 40+ countries across the world, employing over 4,500 lawyers, CMS has longstanding expertise both at advising in its local jurisdictions and across borders. CMS acts for a large number of Fortune 500 companies and the FT European 500 and for the majority of the DAX 30. Revenues totalled EUR 1.36bn in 2018.

    About Cooley LLP

    Clients partner with Cooley on transformative deals, complex IP and regulatory matters, and high-stakes litigation, where innovation meets the law. Cooley has 1,100+ lawyers across 16 offices in the United States, Asia and Europe.

    About Rajah & Tann Asia

    Rajah & Tann Asia brings together leading law firms and lawyers in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, with each offering the highest standards of service to locally-based clients while collectively having the capability to handle the most complex regional and cross-border transactions and to provide excellent legal counsel seamlessly across the region. With over 750 fee earners, all working towards one shared goal, we are lawyers who know Asia and who give our clients home advantage.
    Lupl mockup features on mobile.

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      # Lupl Workstream Design Principles: A Practical Guide to Legal Project Management for Lawyers Legal project management works when your setup is simple, ownership is clear, and statuses are unambiguous. This guide shows how to turn existing processes and checklists into a lean, reliable Workstream. Lupl is the legal project management platform for law firms, making it easy and intuitive to apply these principles. It also supports moving your work from Excel, Word tables, or if you are transitioning from Microsoft Planner, Smartsheet, or Monday. You will learn what belongs in a Workstream, a Task, or a Step, and which columns to use. If you want practical project management for lawyers, start here. **Excerpt:** Legal project management works when ownership, dates, and statuses are clear. This guide shows lawyers how to turn checklists into Lupl Workstreams with the right columns, Tasks, and Steps. Use it to standardize project management for lawyers, reduce follow ups, and move matters to done. --- ## How to organize your work with Workstreams, Tasks, and Steps Workstreams, Tasks, and Steps are three different types of objects in Lupl. They form a simple hierarchy. Workstreams contain Tasks. Tasks may contain optional Steps. This hierarchy aligns with standard project management. In project management, you break work into projects, deliverables, and subtasks. Lupl adapts this for lawyers by using Workstreams, Tasks, and Steps. This makes it easier to map legal processes to a structure that teams can track and manage. * **Workstream.** Use when you have many similar or related items to track over time. Think of the Workstream as the table. * Examples: closing checklist, court deadlines, pretrial preparation, regulatory obligations, due diligence, local counsel management. * **Task.** A high level unit of legal work. A key deliverable with an owner and a due date. Tasks are the rows. * Examples: File motion. Prepare Shareholder Agreement. Submit Q3 report. * **Step.** An optional short checklist inside a single Task. Steps roll up to the parent Task. * Examples: Draft. QC. Partner review. E file. Serve. ### Quick test * If it can be overdue by itself, make it a Task. * If it only helps complete a Task, make it a Step. * If you need different columns or owners, create a separate Workstream. --- ## Do you need to track everything in Lupl Not every detail needs to be tracked in a project management system. The principle is to capture what drives accountability and progress. In Lupl, that means focusing on deliverables, not every micro action. * Use the level of detail you would bring to a weekly team meeting agenda. * Position Tasks as key deliverables. Treat Steps as optional micro tasks to show progress. * Example: You need client instructions. Do not add a Task for "Email client to request a call." Just make the call. If the client approves a key deliverable on the call, mark that item Approved in Lupl so the team has visibility. --- ## Start with the Core 5 columns Columns are the backbone of a Workstream. They define what information is tracked for each Task. In project management terms, these are your core metadata fields. They keep everyone aligned without overcomplicating the table. Keep the table narrow. You can add later. These five work across most legal project management use cases. 1. **Title.** Start with a verb. Example: File answer to complaint. 2. **Status.** Five to seven clear choices. Example: Not started, In progress, For review, For approval, Done. 3. **Assignee.** One named owner per row. If you add multiple assignees for collaboration, still name a primary owner. 4. **Due date.** One date per row. 5. **Type or Category.** Show different kinds of work in one table. Example: Filing, Discovery, Signature, Approval. **Priority.** Add only if you actively triage by priority each week. If added, keep it simple: High, Medium, Low. --- ## Add up to three Helper columns Lupl includes a set of pre made columns you can use out of the box. These allow you to customize Workstreams around different phases or stages of a matter. They also let you map how you already track transactional work, litigation, or other processes. Helper columns are optional fields that add context. In task management, these are similar to tags or attributes you use to sort and filter work. The key is to only add what you will update and use. Pick only what you will use. Stop when you reach three. * Party or Counterparty * Jurisdiction or Court * Phase * Approver * Approval, status or yes or no * Signature status * Risk, RAG * Amount or Number * External ID or Client ID * Document or Link * Docket number * Client entity **Guidance** * For Task Workstreams, prefer Approver, Approval, Risk. The rest are more common in Custom Workstreams. * Aim for eight columns or fewer in your main table. Put detail in the Task description, attachments, or Steps. --- ## Simple rules that keep your table clean Consistency is critical in project management. A cluttered or inconsistent table slows teams down. These rules ensure your Workstream remains usable and clear. * Only add a column people will update during the matter. If it never changes, set a default at the Workstream level or set a default value in the column. * Only add a column you will sort or filter on. If you will not use it to find or group work, leave it out. * If a value changes inside one Task, use Steps. Steps show progress without widening the table. * Keep columns short and structured. Use Description for brief context or instructions. Use Task comments for discussion and decisions. Link to work product in your DMS as the source of truth. * One accountable owner per Task and one due date. You can add collaborators, but always name a primary owner who moves the Task. If different people or dates apply to different parts, split into separate Tasks or capture the handoff as Steps. * Add automations after you lock the design. Finalize columns and status definitions first. Then add simple reminders and escalations that read those fields. --- ## Status hygiene that everyone understands Status is the single most important column in project management. It tells the team where the work stands. Too many options cause confusion. Too few cause misalignment. In Lupl, keep it simple and consistent. * Five to seven statuses are enough. * Use one review gate, For review or For approval. Use both only if your process needs two gates. * One terminal status, Done. This is the end state of the Task. Use Archived only if you report on it or need it for retention workflows. --- ## When to split into multiple Workstreams In project management, it is best practice to separate workstreams when workflows, owners, or audiences diverge. Lupl makes this easy by letting you create multiple Workstreams for one matter. Create a new Workstream if any of the following are true. * You need a different set of columns for a chunk of work. * Ownership or cadence is different, for example daily docketing vs monthly reporting. * The audience or confidentiality needs are different. **Signal** * If half your rows leave several columns blank, you are mixing processes. Split the table. --- ## Decision tree, three quick questions Use this quick framework to decide where an item belongs. This is the same principle used in task management software, adapted for legal workflows. 1. Is this a list of similar items over time, or a discrete phase of the matter * Yes. Create a Workstream. 2. Can it be overdue by itself, and does it need an owner * Yes. Create a Task. 3. Is it a step to finish a Task and not tracked on its own * Yes. Create a Step. --- ## Common mistakes to avoid Many project management failures come from overdesigning or misusing the structure. Avoid these mistakes to keep your Workstreams lean and effective. * Wide tables with many optional columns. Keep it to eight or fewer. * Two columns for the same idea, for example Status and Phase that overlap. Merge or define clearly. * More than one approval gate when one would do. It slows work and confuses owners. * Mixing unrelated processes in one table, for example signatures and invoice approvals. --- ## Build your first Workstream Building a Workstream is like setting up a project board. Keep it light, pilot it, then refine. Lupl is designed to let you do this quickly without heavy admin work. 1. Write the Workstream purpose in one sentence. 2. Add the Core 5 columns. 3. Add at most three Helpers you will use. 4. Define clear Status meanings in plain words. 5. Set defaults for any value that repeats on most rows, for example Jurisdiction. 6. Add two light automations, a due soon reminder and an overdue nudge. 7. Pilot for one week and adjust. --- ## Where this fits in legal project management Use these principles to standardize project management for lawyers across matters. Keep structures consistent. Reuse column sets and status definitions. Your team will find work faster, reduce follow ups, and close loops on time. --- ### On page SEO helpers * Suggested title tag. Lupl Workstream Design Principles, Practical Legal Project Management for Lawyers * Suggested meta description. Learn how to design lean Lupl Workstreams for legal project management. Get clear rules for Tasks, Steps, statuses, and columns to run matters with confidence. * Suggested URL slug. legal-project-management-for-lawyers-workstream-design

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