Lupl announced today (9 January) that it has hired former Litera director and Fringe Legal founder Ab Saraswat as its chief revenue officer, as Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s global director of practice innovation, Nick Pryor announced that he has joined UK top 50 law firm Freeths as director of KM and innovation. The announcements follow the news last week that Reynen Court’s director of global sales, Rich Rifkin, has joined Intapp – we speak to Rifkin about his new role.
Announcing Saraswat’s hire, Lupl said today in a statement: “With more than a decade of experience building, growing, and leading successful sales organizations within the legal technology space, most recently at Litera, Ab will bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise. Ab will lead the company’s revenue growth strategy and execution.”
Saraswat, who was part of the Xref team acquired by Microsystems in 2016, then acquired by Litera in 2018, said of Lupl: “I believe that the platform has the potential to revolutionize the way that law firms and legal departments manage and collaborate on matters, and I am looking forward to being part of that journey.”
Lupl is a project management and collaboration platform designed specifically for law firms and legal departments. Founded in 2019, Lupl is the product of a massive collaboration among a group representing more than 10,000 lawyers globally. The platform has more than 500 organizations in over 50 countries on board.
Elsewhere Pryor announced his move today on LinkedIn, commenting: “After 14 amazing years at BCLP, I recently decided that I was itching for a new and different challenge. So… today I’m excited to (finally!) announce that I’ve started a new role as Director of KM & Innovation at Freeths LLP!”
Pryor observed that he has always been attracted to the “scale up” phase of the business lifecycle, saying of Freeths: “The firm has been delivering extraordinary compound growth (c.10%) year-on-year since 2015. This, coupled with its business-before-law “Freethinking” culture; cloud-first posture; and enthusiasm for legaltech provide an amazing foundation for differentiated legal services. Joining their leadership team was a compelling opportunity which I simply couldn’t resist!”
The hires follow the news last week that Rich Rifkin, formerly director of global sales at Reynen Court, has joined Intapp as practice group leader. Rifkin will be working with Intapp’s content and collaboration solutions group headed by Pat Archbold but more specifically working with the Repstor suite acquired by Intapp in 2021, and helping law firms to better understand how they can leverage Microsoft Teams. Rifkin said: “Firms are trying to leverage Teams more effectively to create workspaces, and I’ll be helping them to do that.”
Rifkin added: “When I was at Reynen Court I heard time and time again that firms want to leverage what they own, and are trying to solve more problems with Teams. There is a lot of misunderstanding around what Teams can and can’t do, and one of the things that so excited me about this opportunity at Intapp is that I think Teams will help firms to enhance their collaboration with clients and become more effective internally.”