LEAP Areas of Law: The teams behind your practice software

Meet the teams building LEAP for your area of law

If you've heard us mention LEAP "verticals" or “Areas of Law” and weren't quite sure what we meant, this one's for you.

Over the past year, LEAP has built dedicated practice area teams: groups of specialist solicitors, legal researchers, product managers, designers and developers focused exclusively on one area of law. We call them our Areas of Law teams. They're the reason LEAP is starting to feel less like general-purpose software and more like a solution built for the business of law.

Get to know who is behind the innovation, what they've built for our clients, and what's coming next.

Why dedicated practice area teams?

No two areas of law operate in the same way. Each practice area has its own matters, workflows, key dates and procedural requirements.

LEAP has been building legal software for more than 30 years. That history matters, not just as a credential, but because it reflects a long-held belief that the best legal software comes from people who understand legal practice. We first put that thinking into dedicated practice area teams with LEAP Family Law over 2 years ago. That team has now grown and matured into one of the most comprehensive practice area offerings in LEAP.

That model now runs across six more practice areas: Property, Personal Injury, Estates, Criminal Law, Litigation, and Employment. Each of these practice areas is led by a specialist solicitor and supported by a dedicated team of legal researchers, product managers, and developers. Together, they're the reason LEAP feels less like general-purpose software and more like something built for your practice.

Most LEAP clients don't have a dedicated AI implementation or knowledge officer on staff. LEAP’s Areas of Law teams effectively fill that role, sitting with the technology, testing it, and building guardrails so that when something reaches you, it works. As Bridget Barnett, who leads the Criminal Law team, puts it: "Lawyers understand how practice actually operates." That understanding is the foundation everything else is built on.

Our teams are targeting a foundation-first approach. Getting matter types, forms, critical dates, and database structure right before layering on AI and apps. It's why the tools that go live are reliable and add immediate value.

What have the Areas of Law teams delivered to date?

Since the start, the teams have been working hard to establish their teams. Focused on hiring the right people, planning the right product roadmap and implementing the faster improvements early on.

Below you’ll get a greater feel for what each team has worked on so far.

LEAP Property — led by Angela Johnston

The Property team takes a focused approach to building software for busy property lawyers and conveyancers. Features are designed for property law rather than adapted from generic tools. Legislative changes are reflected in the software as they happen, and improvements come directly from feedback from firms using it every day. Because the team works exclusively on property, priorities aren’t competing with other practice areas.

That approach shows up in the Settlement Adjustments app, a modernised solution that streamlines settlement workflows and reduces errors. It also shows up in the AI prompts purpose built for property work - contract reviews and preparing common correspondence like post-exchange letters or letters advising on a building inspection. Most lawyers and conveyancers are surprised by how much time they save the first time they use them.

As Angela puts it, "The time saved using specialised prompts can add value to any workflow as it’s a repeatable, structured, and easy process. This can assist busy lawyers and conveyancers with faster turnaround time on matters, less mental load across the day and more time spent on genuinely complex issues."

For high-volume matters, consistency matters as much as speed. Automated task templates for residential purchase and sale matters further add value - keeping deadlines visible so attention goes where it is needed.

LEAP Personal Injury — led by Aaron Sahin

The Personal Injury team is focused on understanding where the most value sits in a PI matter and making those tasks simpler, quicker, and more efficient for the lawyers doing them every day.

Compensate is the clearest expression of that so far. Complex damages calculations that have traditionally lived across spreadsheets, external calculators, and actuarial handbooks now happen in one place, producing a formatted Schedule of Damages in minutes with actuarial metrics from the Furzer Crestani handbook built in and automatically applied.

As Aaron puts it: "Knowing where the most value lies on billable tasks and how to complete them simpler, quicker, and more efficiently is what every lawyer and business owner is looking for." Alongside Compensate, the PIAWE calculator handles pre-injury average weekly earnings within matter management, and a growing library of PI-specific AI prompts supports the drafting and document work that rounds out a personal injury matter day to day. Learn more about Compensate here.

LEAP Estates — led by Mahwish Malik

The newly released Assets & Liabilities app gives estates lawyers a single, structured place to record and track estate administration matters. The Estates team has also overhauled matter types and critical dates in NSW, improved forms and precedents to reduce manual formatting, and built AI prompts for matter summaries, trust deed and company summaries, and client correspondence. Mahwish is direct about what the team is solving for: "Some practice areas can be quite niche and a one-size-fits-all approach won't always work."

The prompts are a good example of what jurisdiction-specific expertise actually produces. In her words, they're "a huge timesaver — matter summaries, trust deed summaries, letters to clients with draft documents" used every day across estates matters.

Because estates law is jurisdiction-specific, the team includes lawyers across NSW, QLD, and VIC, each bringing expertise for their state. The team is built to reflect that reality, not work around it. More to come shortly.

LEAP Criminal Law — led by Bridget Barnett

The Criminal Law team has delivered a complete overhaul of NSW matter types, updated criminal law forms, criminal-specific AI prompts, and a JIRS integration bringing the Judicial Information Research System directly into LEAP. Criminal lawyers in NSW can now access case law and sentencing data without leaving their file. The Court Outcomes app, which tracks the full history of proceedings and orders, is currently in beta.

What does that look like on a real matter? In Bridget's words: "Draft a very good quality first draft of an instructing letter to a psychiatrist in relation to sentence proceedings in seconds." That's the kind of practical, time-saving capability the team is focused on building more of.

LEAP Litigation — led by Kate Himmelhoch

Litigation spans an enormous range of practice — from debt recovery in the Local Court to multi-party commercial disputes in the Supreme Court. A general-purpose tool can't serve that range well. The Litigation team is focused on building software that fits how litigators actually work, starting with strong foundations and layering in AI tools that are genuinely useful in practice.

On the AI tools already available to litigators, Kate shares, "Compiling an index to counsel, flicking through old emails and filenotes to draft a procedural chronology, getting across a file you haven't touched in three months — LEAP's AI handles a significant portion of that groundwork, freeing lawyers up for the work that actually requires their judgment, and frankly, the work that actually gets billed." Lawyers who haven't seen it tend to be genuinely surprised by how much is already possible.

LEAP Employment Law — led by Carly Stebbing

The Employment team is the newest, coming together in late March 2026. Employment law hasn't previously had a dedicated content focus at LEAP. That's changing, and the timing matters. General protection claims alone are expected to grow by over 70% in the next three years. Employment lawyers now have a team dedicated to their practice for the first time.

The team is currently meeting with employment law LEAP clients to map pain points and validate ideas, with matter types, smart forms, precedents, and AI tools all in development. The ambition is broader than the product pipeline, too. Carly sees the role clearly: "LEAP users effectively have the benefit of an outsourced and practice area specific knowledge and innovation officer — a team dedicated to the design and delivery of AI powered solutions to improve workflows, productivity and profits." Beyond product, there are also plans to build a community for employment lawyers to connect, share knowledge, and learn from one another.

LEAP Family Law – led by Jenna Downy

The Family Law team has spent the past two years building out LEAP’s first vertical, delivering a specialised experience tailored to the needs of family lawyers. Alongside enhanced matter types, precedents, and workflows, the team has introduced dedicated apps including Parenting Calendar +, Balance Sheet +, and Ruffle - helping streamline parenting arrangements, property settlement, and financial disclosure.

The team has also launched The Family Law Forum, a CPD platform offering webinars, papers, and practical resources, enabling lawyers to stay current and meet their CPD requirements at no extra cost.

As Managing Director Jenna Downy explains: “Having practised as a family lawyer myself, I joined LEAP with a mission to enhance our offerings specifically for family law professionals. The LEAP family law team is committed to delivering significant additional value through specialised content and innovative developments, ensuring you have the tools you need to succeed in family law practice.”

What's on the horizon?

Every Areas of Law team has a pipeline of tools, features, and improvements in development. Each vertical is at a different stage, but the direction is consistent across all of them. The focus is on reducing the administrative load on lawyers and building AI tools that handle the groundwork, so practitioners can spend more of their time on higher value work.

In estates, the EstatePlanner app is one of several tools coming down the pipeline for NSW, with jurisdiction-specific work also underway for QLD and VIC.

In employment, the roadmap reflects the scale of the opportunity. Matter types, smart forms, precedents, calculators, and tools designed to make employment law more accessible.

Across property, personal injury, criminal law, litigation, and family law, each team is continuing to build on what's already been delivered, with updates to share as things come to life.

And across every area of law, the AI prompt library continues to grow. Which means every LEAP client benefits, regardless of their practice area.

A note on AI prompts

The AI prompt library works differently to most features. Each Areas of Law team builds prompts specific to their practice area, but every prompt they build is available to all LEAP clients regardless of what kind of law they practise. The library compounds. The more teams build, the more every client benefits.

You can access prompts across all practice areas through Forms and Precedents > Browse > Prompt filter > All States. If you haven't explored what's there, it's worth a few minutes of your time.

Final thoughts

LEAP’s Areas of Law teams are still growing, and so is what they're building. The goal has always been the same: software that fits your practice, not the other way around. Every release gets closer to that.

All of the products covered here are included in every LEAP subscription.

To see what's available for your practice area, visit the LEAP Areas of Law page or get in touch with our team.