Elevate has bought Lupl, the legal project management platform backed by CMS, Cooley, and Rajah & Tann Asia. It’s the latest in a series of acquisitions from the now multifaceted law company, which also has its own software offering. (See AL interview below).
Elevate already has its own ELM (enterprise legal management) system, as well as ELMA, which provides agentic automation for legal teams.
Meanwhile, Lupl launched back in 2020 and has evolved with the times. Today, the platform ‘integrates agentic AI with task management, collaboration, and workflow automation, most recently through a set of capabilities built specifically around Claude’. In short, you can see how the acquisition will bolster Elevate’s software strategy.
Liam Brown, Chairman and CEO, Elevate, commented: ‘This acquisition is an important next step for Elevate’s software business.’
‘Lupl has built a category-defining platform, a talented team, and a strong customer base that includes some of the world’s leading law firms. Together with ELM and ELMA, Lupl advances our vision for automating legal work by connecting teams and data across matters and workflows.’
At present, Lupl primarily helps ‘to manage complex legal matters, from cross-border M&A transactions and multi-jurisdictional regulatory projects to high-stakes disputes’ they said.
The platform supports the full life of a matter, including ‘intake and scoping, planning and budgeting, task and deadline tracking, client collaboration, and progress reporting’ – and that will connect well with Elevate’s ELM system, which was also launched in 2020.
Elevate will now develop the platform and extend its reach across Elevate’s global customer base of law departments and law firms.
Jeff Green, CEO of Lupl, commented: ‘Law is changing, and the way legal work gets managed is changing with it. The days of running legal projects on spreadsheets and post-it notes are ending. Joining Elevate gives us the scale, resources, and reach to define what comes next, and to bring it to many more legal teams.’
AL Interview with Elevate
Why do this and why now?
AI is being bolted onto legal processes, but the way those processes are managed hasn’t changed much in 20 years. It is often still email threads, Excel trackers and Post-it notes. As AI accelerates the throughput and velocity of legal work, these legacy processes are no longer fit for purpose, and the need for a system to organise and orchestrate legal work for human + agent teams has become more urgent.
Lupl brings an AI-native legal project management platform built around Claude, Harvey and Copilot, while Elevate has 15 years of experience in legal workflows, data and technology, and long-standing relationships with many of the world’s largest law firms and law departments. Joining Elevate gives Lupl the scale, resources and reach to take our mission to many more legal teams.
How did this come about / how did you meet?
Lupl and Elevate have been collaborating since last year, having previously been introduced via a shared customer. As our product and engineering teams spent more time together, we realized we shared a common vision of an AI-native platform for managing legal work for law firms and law departments. It was also obvious that each company had capabilities that were on the other’s product roadmap, so working together provided a way to get those capabilities in the hands of our customers much faster.
What was the sale price?
The terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.
What will the Lupl team do now? Will they all be joining?
The entire Lupl team is joining Elevate, including CEO, Jeff Green, and Chief Product Officer, Matt Pollins, as well as staff from Customer Success, Sales and Engineering, with the exception of Ab Saraswat, who recently accepted a law firm innovation role, unrelated to this transaction. The Lupl brand will continue, and it will be business as usual for the platform and customers.
Over time, there is a clear opportunity to integrate with Elevate’s legal ops software platform (ELM, which is more focused on corporate law department use cases such as front gate, workflow, dashboard, contact negotiation and analysis, billing and RFP management, and ELMA, its agentic AI tool) to build a common platform for both law firms and law departments.
Congrats to Liam on Elevate’s 15th Birthday this year, and also congrats to both teams!
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More here about Elevate and more about Lupl here.
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Two Major Legal Innovators Conferences this November
Come and join us in New York and London this November at Legal Innovators!
Legal Innovators UK – London, Nov 4 and 5
And, then Legal Innovators New York – Nov 17 and 18.
After another fantastic Legal Innovators California, where we had speakers from OpenAI, Y Combinator, Google, Meta, and many more pioneering organisations; and our stellar inaugural event in Paris this June, we are now looking forward to the landmark conferences in London and New York, both in November, and both across two days: Law Firm Day, and Inhouse Day.
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