Automations let you build workflows that run on their own, keeping your matters on track without manual effort. Each automation watches for a specific event – a trigger – and then carries out one or more actions in response. Once set up, automations work in the background so your team can focus on the work that needs their attention.
You can automate almost anything you find yourself doing repeatedly: sending a weekly status email, creating tasks when a form is submitted, updating statuses when conditions are met, routing incoming matter emails, or calling an external system. Automations can also be built into your matter templates so they are ready to go the moment a new matter is opened.
Who Has Access
Automations are available to Lupl Enterprise customers. They can be used on any matter within your organization. Automations are accessible via the Automations button in the top right corner of any matter view.
Some specific automation capabilities require additional entitlements to be enabled for your organization:
- Ask AI action – requires Lupl AI to be activated
- When Webhook is Received trigger – requires webhooks to be activated
- Send HTTP Request action – requires HTTP requests to be activated
Contact your Lupl account manager or success@lupl.com to enable any of these.
Key Concepts
Every automation is built from the same core components.
Trigger
The event that starts the automation. Each automation has exactly one trigger. If you need to respond to multiple different events, create a separate automation for each – you can clone an existing one to save time.
Conditions
Optional rules that refine when the automation should run. Conditions sit within the trigger and let you filter: for example, only run the automation when a status is changed to “In Progress”, or only when a due date is within the next 7 days. Conditions can be stacked using AND or OR logic, giving you precise control over exactly when an automation fires.
Actions
What happens after the trigger fires. An automation can have one or more actions, which run in sequence. For example: find all overdue items, then send an email listing them.
Variables
Dynamic placeholders that carry real data from one step to the next. Instead of hardcoding values, you insert a variable so the automation can adapt to each situation. For example, the Send Email action can pull the assignees from a preceding Find Items action as the recipient list, or insert the output of an Ask AI action as the email body.
Variables can pull from four sources:
- General matter information – matter name, owner, and other matter-level metadata
- Item data – specific fields from a workstream item, such as name, assignee, due date, or status
- Lists of items – a set of items returned by a Find Items or Find Key Dates step
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Webhook or HTTP data – data received from an external system via an inbound webhook or HTTP request action
Creating an Automation
Click the Automations button in the top right of your matter to open the Automations panel.
When creating a new automation you can give it a name, choose an icon, and add a description to make it easy to identify later.
There are three ways to build an automation: start from a prebuilt Recipe, build from scratch, or import.
Option 1: Use a Recipe
Recipes are prebuilt automation templates for common legal workflows. They get you started quickly and can be fully customized after you add them.
- Open Automations and browse the Recipes library.
- Select a Recipe that fits your use case and click Create Automation.
- Customize the settings – update notification recipients, trigger conditions, task assignments, or any other fields to match your matter.
- Toggle the automation on to activate it. If the toggle is unavailable, required fields are missing – these are highlighted in orange.
| Tip: Have an idea for a Recipe? Send it to success@lupl.com – the team actively adds new Recipes based on customer requests. |
Option 2: Build from Scratch
For workflows that don’t match an existing Recipe, you can build a fully custom automation step by step.
- Click + New Automation in the top-right corner, then choose Start from Scratch.
- Set a trigger – choose the event that will start the automation.
- Add conditions (optional) – refine when the automation should fire by adding one or more conditions within the trigger.
- Add one or more actions – define what happens when the trigger fires. Actions run in sequence; you can drag and drop steps to reorder them.
- Insert variables – use variables to pass data between steps and personalize the output.
- Toggle the automation on to activate it. Required fields not yet filled in are highlighted in orange.
| Note: Each automation can only have one trigger. If you need to respond to several different events, create a separate automation for each. You can clone an existing automation to use it as a starting point. |
Option 3: Import Automations from a Solution or Matter
If another matter or Solution template already has automations set up, you can import them directly rather than building from scratch.
Click + New Automation, select Import, and choose whether to import from an existing Matter or a Solution. Select the source, check the automations you want to bring across, and confirm.
| Note: Imported automations bring the logic across – triggers, conditions, actions, and variables – but they will not know your new matter's workstreams. Before activating any imported automation, open each one and update any workstream, column, or recipient references to match the structure of this matter. Required fields that need attention are highlighted in orange. |
Triggers
Every automation starts with a trigger. Lupl currently supports the following trigger types.
| At a Scheduled Time | Fires the automation at a predefined time and frequency – for example, every Monday at 08:00 AM. The schedule is based on the timezone of the user who creates the automation. |
| Item is Updated | Fires when an existing workstream item or task is modified. Use conditions to target specific field changes, such as when a status is changed to a particular value. |
| Item Matches Conditions | Fires when a workstream item or task meets a defined set of conditions – for example, when an item is incomplete and has a due date within the next 7 days. This trigger evaluates items against the conditions you define and fires for each match. |
| New Item is Created | Fires when a new item is added to a workstream, whether added manually or submitted via an intake form. |
| Matter Email Received | Fires when an email is received at the matter’s dedicated email address. Use this trigger to build inbox-driven automations – for example, automatically creating or updating tasks from inbound communications. |
| When Webhook is Received (Advanced – requires webhooks to be enabled) | Fires when Lupl receives a webhook from an external system – for example, from your practice management system, Docusign, PowerAutomate, or Zapier. This enables event-driven automations triggered from outside Lupl. |
Actions
Actions run after the trigger fires. You can chain multiple actions together and use variables to pass data between them.
| Create Item | Creates a new item within a specified workstream. For example, automatically create a follow-up task when an email is received at the matter address. |
| Find Items | Searches for and retrieves workstream items that match the criteria you define – for example, all items due within the next 7 days across one or more workstreams. The results are available as a variable for use in subsequent actions. |
| Update Item | Modifies the attributes of an existing workstream item – for example, changing its status, adding an assignee, updating a due date, or setting a priority. You can update items from the trigger event or items returned by a Find Items step. |
| Remove Item | Removes a specified item from a workstream. Useful in Smart Solution workflows where items that were not selected during matter setup need to be cleared from the workstream. |
| Find Key Dates | Identifies and retrieves critical deadlines or key dates from your workstreams – for example, all court hearings in the next two weeks. Results are available as a variable in subsequent steps. |
| Send Email | Sends an automated email based on the trigger and any preceding action steps. Emails support rich text formatting and can be fully customized using variables: pull in a list of overdue items, generate a weekly agenda, or notify specific people the moment something changes. Recipient lists can be built dynamically from assignee fields. |
| Assign to Agent | Assigns the trigger item or a specified task to a Lupl Agent. The agent then picks up the work using its configured tools and instructions. Use this to connect automations to agentic workflows – for example, when a matter email arrives, assign it to an agent to triage and update the workstream. |
| Ask AI (Requires Lupl AI to be enabled) | Uses AI to generate content based on inputs you define. For example, draft an email based on the outstanding items in a workstream, summarize recent changes, or classify an incoming request. The output is available as a variable for use in a subsequent Send Email or Update Item action. |
| Send HTTP Request (Advanced – requires HTTP requests to be enabled) | Sends an HTTP request to an external system – for example, to post a status update to a BI tool, send a Teams message, or retrieve data from another platform to use in the next step of the automation. |
Conditions
Conditions let you refine when an automation runs. They sit within the trigger step and are evaluated before any actions execute. If the conditions are not met, the automation does not fire.
Conditions can be combined using AND (all conditions must be true) or OR (any condition must be true). You can stack multiple conditions to build precise logic – for example:
- Status is equal to "In Progress" AND Due Date is within the next 7 days
- Priority is equal to "High" OR Priority is equal to "Critical"
Available condition types include:
- Value comparisons – is equal to, is not equal to, contains, does not contain
- Date-based conditions – within X days, before, after, overdue; supports days and months as time units
- Empty / not empty checks – flag items where a required field has not been filled in
- Budget and time conditions – trigger when budget exceeds a set amount, or based on time-related constraints at item level or across a full workstream
Automations in Matter Templates
When you save a matter as a template, or save a new version of an existing template, your automations are included automatically. This means every matter created from the template inherits the same automation setup, which significantly reduces per-matter configuration time.
By default, automations are deactivated when a new matter is opened from a template. This gives you the opportunity to review and customize any matter-specific settings – such as the correct workstream or recipient – before switching them on.
| Tip: Automations embedded in templates work alongside Agent configurations. If you assign an Assign to Agent action within a template automation, the relevant agent just needs to be added to the new matter for the automation to connect to it automatically. |
Tips and Common Use Cases
Weekly status email
Use the At a Scheduled Time trigger (e.g. every Monday at 09:00) combined with a Find Items action to gather all outstanding tasks. Pass the results into a Send Email action using the Ask AI action to draft a clear, readable summary. Share it with the matter team or supervising partner automatically, without anyone needing to compile it manually.
Deadline reminders
Use the Item Matches Conditions trigger with a condition of "Due Date is within the next 7 days" and "Status is not Complete". Chain a Send Email action to notify the assignee. Schedule it to run daily so reminders land automatically as deadlines approach.
Intake and routing from forms
When a new item is submitted via a Lupl intake form, the New Item is Created trigger fires. Use conditions to classify the request by type or jurisdiction. Chain a Create Item or Update Item action to assign it to the right person and set a due date based on the submission date.
Updating matters from email (Driverless LPM)
Every matter has a dedicated email address. Set up a Matter Email Received trigger with an Assign to Agent action, and the agent reads each inbound email and updates the relevant workstream items automatically. Notes, statuses, and assignees stay current from real-world communications without anyone needing to log in and update manually.
Scope creep detection
Use the New Item is Created trigger combined with an Ask AI action to compare the new task against the agreed scope of work. If the AI detects work outside the original engagement, chain a Send Email action to alert the supervising partner before it reaches billing.
Smart Solution matter setup
Automations are particularly powerful in Smart Solution templates. When a matter is created from a template with conditional logic, automations can be used to remove workstream items that were not selected during setup – using the Remove Item action after a Find Items step – leaving only the items that are relevant to this specific matter. This keeps workstreams clean without any manual tidying.
For more information on Smart Solutions, click here.
Connecting to external systems
Use the When Webhook is Received trigger to fire automations from events in other platforms – your PMS, Docusign, or a PowerAutomate flow. Use the Send HTTP Request action in the other direction to push Lupl data into Teams, a BI dashboard, or any REST-enabled system.
FAQs
How many triggers can an automation have?
One. Each automation has exactly one trigger. If you need to respond to multiple events, create a separate automation for each. Use the Clone Automation option to duplicate an existing one as your starting point.
Can I use automations across workstreams?
Yes. Actions such as Find Items, Create Item, Update Item, and Remove Item can reference workstreams other than the one that triggered the automation. You can build workflows that span the full matter structure.
Can I reorder steps within an automation?
Yes. Steps within a flow can be reordered by dragging and dropping them. This makes it easy to restructure an automation without rebuilding it from scratch.
What happens if an automation runs on an item that has already been deleted?
The automation will log an error for that step but will not mark the full automation run as a failure. The error indicates that the action was attempted on an item that no longer exists.
Can I clone an automation?
Yes. You can clone any existing automation to use as the basis for a new one. This is the recommended approach when you need similar logic across multiple triggers.
Are automations included in matter templates?
Yes. When you save a matter as a template, automations are included automatically. They are deactivated by default on matter opening so you can verify and customize any matter-specific settings before activating them.
What time zone do scheduled automations use?
Scheduled automations run based on the timezone of the user who created the automation.
Can automations work with Lupl Agents?
Yes. The Assign to Agent action connects automations directly to agentic workflows. For example, when an email arrives at the matter address, an automation can immediately assign it to an agent to triage, update workstream items, and notify the right people – all without manual intervention.
I need help setting up an automation. Who can I contact?
Lupl offers 1:1 and small group training on automations. Reach out to success@lupl.com to schedule a session.
Related Resources
- Agents in Lupl – see the Agents article in the Support Hub
- Smart Solutions in Lupl – see the Smart Solutions article in the Support Hub
- Questions and training: success@lupl.com