US-based LegalTech startup Lupl, an open industry platform for legal matters, wants to digitise South Africa’s legal sector.
The company recently secured $14 million (R210 million) in a recent funding round as it builds momentum for its launch this year.
Lupl’s latest funding round is in addition to the more than $10 million (R150 million) raised before its beta launch, taking its overall financing to over $25 million (R375 million) and making it amongst the most well-backed legal technology startups at its stage of development.
The platform is currently in beta testing and will have its public release in 2021.
The company is being incubated by international law firms CMS, Cooley, and Rajah & Tann Asia, with support from an advisory board of 16 in-house lawyers from blue-chip firms.
South Africa and Kenya are likely to benefit from Lupl.
In 2019 CMS expanded into South Africa through law firm RM Partners and Daly & Inamdar Advocates in Kenya.
Therefore, South Africa and Kenya stand to gain from the open industry platform.
“The digitisation of the legal sector on the continent, South Africa in particular, is important to us – Lupl creates efficiencies on costs and time whilst enhancing real-time accessibility and accountability,” said Yushanta Rungasammy, Director and Co-head of Corporate & Commercial at CMS RM Partners.
Lupl’s open industry platform is built with “bring your own system” technology that aims to synchronise all the moving parts of a legal matter – the conversations, the documents, the scope, the knowledge, the data.
The startup claims that it currently has over 500 companies from more than 50 countries on its beta waitlist.
It has also announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Singapore’s Ministry of Law that would see the two entities advance the digitisation of the city-state’s legal sector.
Lupl has been in global private beta testing since March of last year, claiming to represent over 10,000 lawyers in 100 jurisdictions. It plans to start operating from the beginning of April 2021.
