Introducing Workstreams by Lupl

A revolutionary new way to plan, organize and deliver your next matter.

In law, every practice area is different. An M&A transaction has little in common with litigation. Asset financing is markedly different from a data privacy matter.  

But despite their differences, there are common threads. Most matters have (or should have!) a budget, a scope of work, deadlines, steps to be completed, often in a particular order, documents that have to be drafted and approved, issues that need to be tracked and resolved, and tasks that need to be allocated to team members, prioritized, and completed.

While building Lupl, we learned a lot about these common threads because our vision is for an open platform that legal professionals can use to manage any type of legal matter. And as we talked with lawyers about these common threads, we kept hearing lawyers use the same term - "Workstreams."

What are Workstreams? 

In the legal industry, 'Workstreams' refer to the organized sequences of tasks, activities, and responsibilities that comprise a larger legal project.  

They break down a legal matter into specific, manageable components. An M&A matter might have workstreams for Due Diligence, Structuring, Transaction Documents, Closing, and Post-Closing. A dispute might have steps for Investigation, Discovery, Expert Witnesses, Trial Prep, etc. 

This systematic approach aids teams in efficiently allocating resources, prioritizing tasks, and ensuring all aspects of a matter are handled promptly.  

Workstreams often follow a specific order; in M&A, for instance, Due Diligence always precedes Closing. However, more often than not, multiple workstreams run concurrently, with lawyers managing several simultaneously. 

How do lawyers manage their Workstreams today? 

75% of lawyers use “nothing” for Legal Project Management. Seriously. Of course, we don’t mean literally nothing – but 75% of the time, lawyers use tables or lists in email, Excel, or Microsoft Word, instead of a dedicated project or matter management tools.  

When managing multiple Workstreams at once – and each Workstream has numerous moving parts – these tools leave much to be desired. A closing checklist in Word is out of date the moment it’s sent. An advice tracker in Excel is clunky and manual. An issues list in an email is buried halfway down a thread. There has to be a better way… 

Introducing Workstreams by Lupl 

We are so excited to introduce our solution – and it’s called… you guessed it…“Workstreams.” Let’s see how it works: 

Unlimited Custom Columns. Plan, organize, and deliver anything.

We’ve rebuilt our “Tasks” feature from the ground up by allowing you to add unlimited custom columns. Want to add a column for approval status? Easy. Need a traffic light column to track risk? No problem. Perhaps a “jurisdiction” column to organize advice – we’ve got one of those too. Our custom columns now allow you to plan, organize and deliver far more than just tasks. Out of the box, we provide ten custom column types and hundreds of prebuilt “Popular” columns specifically tailored for legal matters.

Intuitive Workstream Builder. Get up and running in seconds with no training.

The downside of infinite flexibility can be infinite complexity. “Endlessly configurable” all too often means “Configure it endlessly” (we’re looking at you, portals). So, to make it easy to get started, we distilled Workstreams down into ten distinct Workstream types based directly on your feedback.

Importantly, you can choose which Workstream(s) make sense for your matter. And if you need something that isn’t listed, our Custom Columns (see above) are totally flexible, so that you can build it from scratch.

• Budget & Proposal. Build a budget and proposal with assumptions and track WIP. 
• Intake. From onboarding to matter intake, get and organize all the info you need from the client. 
• Checklist. Track and complete all necessary actions to close out your deal, process, or case. 
• Tasks. Move your matter forward by assigning and tracking key tasks and actions. 
• Documents List. Track the status, parties, and other essential information for your case or deal documents. (Syncs with your DMS too!) 
• Approvals. Assign documents or other items that need approvals and track approval status. 
• Issues List. Monitor, organize, assign, and resolve all open issues. 
• Counsel Tracker. Clear conflicts, get fee quotes, and obtain advice in multi-jurisdictional projects. 
• Process. Whether it’s a steps plan or trial prep, manage your case, deal, or project step by step. 
• Work Allocation. Think of this as the “People” Workstream. Use it to track and monitor team capacity for better work allocation. 

Export to Word and Excel. Share a snapshot of your Workstream with clients and others.

Workstreams provide real-time visibility to everyone in the Lupl matter. But we appreciate that some stakeholders may not be on the platform – that’s why we’ve introduced auto-export to Word and Excel. With one click, you can download any Workstream and share outside of Lupl. 

Forms. Automate the intake of information into your Workstreams.

Lupl Forms is a powerful solution that automates information intake into your Workstream. Here are some examples: 

• Intake – for high-volume work, Intake forms allow the client to issue instructions in a simple form with all the inputs you need to triage the request and get started.  
• Local Counsel Tracking – let’s say your client needs advice from 30 countries. You could email them… or you could share the Form that Lupl automatically built for you and sit back as their responses land automatically in your Workstream with zero extra effort. (We wrote a whole blog post on this use case.)
• Status Tracking – need multiple team members to report status or progress? Issue a simple Form and see the status updates appear magically in your Workstream.

If building Forms sounds like extra work, it isn’t. For every Workstream, Lupl will automatically build a Form in the background. The fields in the Form sync with the columns in your Workstream. You can toggle this on and off, set permissions and security, and customize it endlessly. The Form recipients don’t even need to be on Lupl. 

Build with Lupl AI (Beta). Let Lupl AI build a plan for you.

We’re really excited about this one. Lupl will build out all your Workstreams for you – just forward an email to your org’s unique email address or a simple text prompt within the platform. Your firm can configure and fine-tune Lupl AI to ensure it builds a plan uniquely tailored to your way of working. And better plans lead to better outcomes on your deal, project, or case. 

See Workstreams in action today 

Workstreams, Forms, and Lupl AI are launching in Q4. Register here to get a demo and see them in action.