Leap Legal Software: Australia's Most Successful and Largest Legaltech Company

In future a law firm’s success will lie in its ability to work digitally on all matters from any location (including in the office). As such, architecting a Cloud Platform to maximize the value of data and enhance operational efficiency takes a great deal of business strategy.

Founded as an integrator of LegalTech-based business solutions, LEAP designs, architects, and deploys optimized cloud products that facilitate digital transformation and enhance operations by leveraging a suite of products developed by LEAP itself as well as Third Party software developers using the LEAP API Gateway.

True to their tagline of, “Firms using LEAP make More Money” LEAP has been present at the heart of Australian ‘LegalTech evolution’ for more than 25 years. Several innovations by the company have set a benchmark in the LegalTech Market. LEAP’s signature cloud-based solution has been designed for law firms with a capacity of 1-100 users. Believing that it is impossible to meet all-size firms’ needs this concentration of effort has enabled LEAP to focus more on what lawyers need to be more efficient and to record time accurately and optimally – especially those who practice in the common areas of law for firms in the ‘sandbox” including General litigation, Family Law, Conveyancing, and Estate Planning and Probate and Criminal Law.

What’s more?

The solutions include an interactive web portal that enables consumers to complete onboarding forms, schedule appointments, comment on and sign documents and pay bills directly to an invoice–all entirely on mobile devices and online.

Most law firms need to predict cash flow/revenue accurately, and the introduction of accessible, affordable Payment Installment Plans through the RapidPay brand allows them to do so. This takes the pressure off clients having to find a hefty deposit for legal matters and eliminates the “bill shock” of unexpected large bills and makes it much easier to collect outstanding debt. Providing payment certainty also delivers substantial value to the lawyers working in a law firm who can concentrate on legal issues rather than worrying about getting paid. “LEAP is committed to ongoing innovation to improve efficiencies and optimise income – to help law firms do more with the same number of people. Our R&D budget in FY21 will top A$20 million.” adds Richard Hugo-Hamman, the Executive Chairman at LEAP.

This innovation saw LEAP move away from proprietary systems where a best of breed approach made sense.

LEAP pioneered deep integration with the Microsoft Office suite, intruding integrated email at far back as 2004. Today all LEAP clients use Microsoft 365 working seamlessly with LEAP. Another pioneering move was to use MYOB and later Xero as well, for General Ledger, BAS and Payroll purposes. This approach has been copied by numerous vendors around the world.

To that end, Richard states, “We realised that we could not compete with the giant accounting systems. We wanted to focus on law firm matters and clients.

Integrating with Xero and MYOB has numerous benefits including significantly reducing back office accounting costs, because part-time bookkeepers are plentiful and cost are lower, (LEAP requires far fewer back office accounting because so many previously manual tasks are automated) and significantly reduced annual accounting fees, as most accounting practices are familiar with MYOB and Xero – they no longer had to get reports out of a proprietary system and re-key the data to understand it.

Amid the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, LEAP started developing its cloud-based legal tech solution that was put into General Release in 2012. As of now, LEAP is considered the most widely used legal software in Australia, with more than 5,500 firms using it. Twelve years later, to battle out the current pandemic situation, LEAP has provided legal firms with its solution, so that the employees of those organizations could conveniently work from home. “Firms using LEAP transitioned effortlessly and immediately to working from home with no additional cost or disruption to helping their clients, and without the stresses suffered by firms still using outdated on-premise legal practice management software.” Richard continued.

Another key innovation is that LEAP also offers sophisticated electronic data and document conversions from 89 competitor systems. According to Richard “Change can be disruptive. We make is a lot easier. LEAP has now successfully completed more than 5,000 electronic data conversions for law firms. Our people are very experienced, and our system of checks and balances has been proven.”

LEAP is the only truly international provider of legal practice management software to firms in the 1-100 market, with more than 150 people involved in product development and 500 staff in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

LEAP is Australia’s most successful LegalTech story.