How Rajah & Tann Streamlines TMT Transactions And Multi-jurisdictional Projects

With almost 1,000 legal professionals across 10 countries, Rajah & Tann Asia is the largest law firm in Southeast Asia. 

Jewel Seo and Keith Wong are Associates in the firm’s busy Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) practice.  

In this post, they discuss how they use Lupl as a central place to plan, organize and track work for the team’s key clients. 

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About the team 

The team advises on all aspects of TMT projects in the B2B and B2C space, including transactions, commercial contracts, intellectual property, M&A, and data protection.  

The challenges of managing work without a central system 

As in many firms, work has typically been managed in Microsoft Outlook. With the practice growing fast, this has made it difficult to stay on top of everything. 

Keith summarises the challenges of managing work in email: 

“Typically, a lot of the coordination is done over email, still, and in quite a traditional format. It can be quite tedious and it takes a number of man hours to actually keep track of all the different moving parts that goes on.” 

Inbox overload on regional projects  

The challenge is exacerbated in a fast-moving regional practice. With 10 offices across the region and a global client base, the team regularly handles mandates that span the region, often with tight deadlines and strategic importance. 

Jewel elaborates on the challenges of managing multi-jurisdictional projects: 

“The bulk of our clients are looking for us to coordinate and get assistance from different jurisdictions on a timely basis, which does involve a lot more emails a lot more and coordination time…and a lot of just making sure that we’re on top of things from many different jurisdictions. Our inbox can be quite explosive!” 

A key client with specific requirements 

Keith provides an example of one of the firm’s key clients, which recently engaged Rajah & Tann to support on a series of strategically important transactions in the region: 

“So for this particular key client, at the very start, they had told us quite clearly that this project would be a long-term project with many different moving parts. With the transaction volume, it had the potential to be overwhelming, so we started looking for a system to organize everything.” 

Using Lupl as a one-stop shop to bring everything together  

The team identified Lupl as a central system for matter coordination and delivery: 

“With Lupl, what we’ve done is utilize it as a one-stop platform that really provides this bird’s eye overview of the entire project. So having these consolidated workstreams in Lupl has been really helpful in terms of project management and also client management.” 

Key features and how they have provided value 

With 10 countries, this often means gathering 10 rounds of input on regulatory or contract questions. Jewel discusses the value of Lupl’s Forms feature, which automates the information gathering process: 

“Especially for these multi-jurisdictional coordinations, which do require a lot of counsel to receive the same information and for us to receive input on the same basis, like fees and timelines – enabling that to be streamlined. I think it’s really beneficial.” 

In addition to the Forms feature, Keith outlines other key Lupl features that provide value to the team. And it starts with…you guessed it…email!  

“One of the things that we really use is the Lupl email function, which brings relevant emails into the matter channel. We make sure that everybody is kept in touch with the latest developments.” 

With the recent expansion of Lupl’s task and project management features, the team has also been using these features to stay on top of who needs to do what and by when: 

“We also use the task functions to assign key deliverables, key deadlines, to certain members of the working group.” 

Keith is also a fan of the “Pins” feature, which allows him to pin key information for all members of the team – ensuring everyone is on the same page, from the beginning to the end of the matter: 

“Another thing that we’ve been using quite a bit is the Pins function because from time to time client will have, you know, new requirements or new specifications that have to go into the documents and by pinning it really like you would on a whiteboard, then everybody can always refer to it to see what updates or key things they have to be aware of.” 

No time for a learning curve 

When adopting new technology, especially in a busy practice, the team knew that a steep learning curve would prevent adoption. This is another reason they were drawn to Lupl, as Jewel explains: 

“Lupl has a simple and balanced design and I haven’t needed training. It doesn’t try to do too much – which I often see with other tools.”  

Closing thoughts 

For this team, the value is clear – it is about bringing the pieces together, so less time is wasted jumping between email threads, status reports and video calls. As Keith puts it: 

“I think having Lupl as a central repository for a client or a matter is very, very helpful. Lupl is just really useful in centralizing everything.”