How Cooley Streamlines Joint Venture Deals with Lupl

Cooley, a global law firm, has been at the forefront of adopting innovative solutions to enhance efficiency and client service in managing complex international joint ventures. Adam Ruttenberg, a partner in Cooley’s technology transactions group, speaks to Lupl’s impact on his practice. 

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Challenge: Navigating Complex Communication Channels 

Adam outlines the pre-Lupl era’s challenges, highlighting the inefficient and inconsistent routing of instructions and information that plagued their practice: 

“The pace of law has picked up substantially… Things that were expected to be done in weeks are now expected to be done in days”  

Adam reflects, emphasizing the increased demand for speed and availability in today’s legal services. The legal team at Cooley faced significant challenges in managing a foreign joint venture involving local counsel across various jurisdictions. The primary issue lay in the inefficient and inconsistent routing of instructions and information, which often resembled a cumbersome game of telephone tag. This method was fraught with starts and stops, dependent on client activity, leading to several key issues: 

• Inconsistent Information Sharing: Reliance on email for communication between Cooley, the client, and multiple local counsels led to delays. Crucial messages were missed, and key team members were sometimes excluded from important updates. 
• Costly Re-engagement: Matters that went dormant for weeks required a costly and time-consuming ramp-up when activity and deadlines resumed, affecting overall efficiency and client satisfaction. 

Solution: Leveraging Lupl for Centralized Coordination 

The adoption of Lupl as the centralized hub for managing their joint ventures marked a pivotal shift in Cooley’s approach to international collaboration. Adam explains:  

“For our complicated deals, we use Lupl to stay organized… It gives us one place to look for all the communications around a matter, making sure that we are performing that matter in an efficient way, in a repeatable way.” 

Lupl’s unified communication channel, consolidated document and task management, and efficient long-term matter management capabilities addressed Cooley’s core challenges. 

• Knowledge Management to Apply Best Practices: Adam emphasizes the significance of Lupl in knowledge management. “We use Lupl to stay organized… leveraging our knowledge infrastructure and applying it to matters so that we’re both more efficient and more organized,” he notes. This centralized approach enables Cooley to store and actively reapply best practices across various matters, ensuring consistency and excellence in service delivery. 
   
• Consolidating Documents and Tasks: One of Lupl’s most significant advantages, is its task management capability. By bringing documents and tasks into a single, visible platform for all team members, the platform provides unparalleled transparency in progress tracking and clarifies task ownership. This feature is pivotal in enhancing team coordination and ensuring that every member is aligned with the project’s status and objectives. 
   
• Efficient Long-term Matter Management: Adam highlights the efficiency Lupl brings to long-standing projects, emphasizing the platform’s capacity for streamlined management: “It gives us one source of truth for a transaction.” This reflection points to Lupl’s ability to simplify the complexities of prolonged legal matters, ensuring that Cooley’s team remains coordinated and efficient, even as cases evolve or pause over time. This adaptability has proven invaluable in maintaining momentum without the need for time-consuming re-acclimatization. 

Why Lupl Works for Cooley 

Lupl transformed the way Cooley managed its international joint venture. Moving beyond the inefficient “game of telephone,” the platform enabled the firm to streamline task tracking and communications significantly. The introduction of the Forms features further enhanced this process, allowing for the seamless addition of foreign counsel to matters without compromising confidentiality. 

“When we’re coordinating with one or more local counsels and other jurisdictions for our international transactions, having a platform like Lupl is essential. Otherwise, we used to see delays in the way we communicate. A client would ask us a question, and we’d have to then ask local counsel. Local counsel would then get back to us, and we’d get back to the client. Often via email and often with many delays. Using some of the features of Lupl, we’ve been able to shorten that cycle and also make sure that everyone stays organized and up to speed on what’s happening in the transaction.” 

Vision for a Global Legal Landscape 

Adam’s insights into the rapidly changing face of legal practice underscore the crucial need for adaptability and efficiency. Reflecting on the pace of change, Adam notes, “The pace of law has picked up substantially… Things that were expected to be done in weeks are now expected to be done in days.” This observation highlights the accelerated expectations in legal service delivery and the complex nature of modern legal transactions. 

Discussing the impact of technology, particularly Lupl, on Cooley’s approach to international joint ventures, Adam provides a clear rationale for the platform’s adoption:  

“Lupl certainly… has given us not just an ability to get more organized and be more efficient for the client in terms of our own work, but it allows us to coordinate multiple lawyers across multiple jurisdictions, both internal to Cooley and external to Cooley, in a way that we couldn’t do before.” 

As the legal industry continues to globalize, Adam’s commentary reflects a proactive stance towards embracing technological solutions like Lupl to navigate these complexities. His experience at Cooley offers valuable insights into the transformative power of such tools in fostering a more interconnected, efficient, and forward-looking legal practice.