Leopard Solutions is the largest law firm data platform serving the legal industry, providing actionable intelligence and insights on over 5,500 law firms worldwide, including 6,800 corporate legal departments in the United States. With its unparalleled data collection and analysis capabilities, Leopard Solutions has become a vital tool for law firms, legal recruiters, corporations, law schools, and legal tech vendors seeking to navigate the complex legal landscape with precision and clarity.
The Evolution of Leopard Solutions
Leopard Solutions began in 2002 as a modest initiative called “The Leopard List.” Founder and General Manager Laura Leopard launched the company with a simple idea:
- Create a comprehensive list of New York law associates.
- Package it on a CD.
- Distribute it to clients.
This early version of Leopard Solutions was a far cry from today’s tech-driven platform; it was a manual process involving copying data from law firm websites into an Excel spreadsheet. Despite its humble beginnings, this initial offering marked the start of a data revolution in legal recruitment.
At a time when lateral recruitment was still in its infancy, legal recruiters relied heavily on personal contacts or the laborious process of combing through hardbound Martindale-Hubbell directories with rulers. Leopard Solutions changed that by democratizing legal recruitment data, leveling the playing field for even the smallest recruiting agencies, and offering them the same high-quality data as the larger firms. This innovation fundamentally transformed the way recruitment was conducted in the legal industry.
The Acquisition by SurePoint and Expansion into Midsize Firms
In May 2024, SurePoint Technologies acquired Leopard Solutions, a move that has dramatically enhanced the capabilities of both companies. This acquisition positioned SurePoint to offer midsize law firms unprecedented access to invaluable benchmarking insights. This partnership empowers firms with the tools they need to drive strategic growth, improve recruitment, and make data-driven decisions by bridging the gap between financial and people intelligence.
The Power of Legal Intelligence for Competitive Advantage
Leopard Solutions has always focused on providing unparalleled legal intelligence that allows law firms to gain a competitive edge, optimize their talent and recruitment processes, and make more informed decisions for strategic growth and long-term success. Unlike other data providers that rely on surveys or self-reported data, Leopard Solutions collects, collates, and enhances publicly available data from multiple sources, offering an objective and accurate picture of the legal landscape.
The core of Leopard Solutions’ operations is a robust data collection platform that continuously monitors law firms, in-house legal departments, and open job positions. The platform scrapes and updates data eight times a day through advanced web crawlers, ensuring that clients receive the most current and comprehensive insights available. This data accuracy and timeliness level is unmatched in the industry, providing users with the crucial information they need in a rapidly changing legal environment.
The Journey from Recruitment Tool to Legal Intelligence Leader
What started as a niche service for legal recruiters has become a cornerstone for the entire legal industry. Leopard Solutions’ data is not just used by recruiters anymore; it now serves law firms, corporations, law schools, and legal tech vendors. The company has become a unicorn in the legal tech space, offering a comprehensive dataset that is continuously updated and transformed into actionable insights.
One of the key milestones in Leopard Solutions’ evolution was the launch of Firmscape in 2016. As its first competitive intelligence platform, Firmscape revolutionized the legal intelligence market by leveraging current and historical data to answer complex questions about the industry. This platform provides insights into law firm growth trends, office openings in various cities, and the evolution of legal practices in real time, enabling firms to stay ahead of the curve.
The Launch of Business Intelligence (BI) for Law Firms
In 2020, Leopard Solutions introduced its Business Intelligence (BI) platform, reshaping the legal data landscape once again. The goal of Leopard BI was to make intelligence easy to understand and actionable for C-suite executives, showing law firms how they can save money, increase profitability, and make smarter decisions. This platform integrates data from both law firms and in-house departments, allowing firms to automatically identify business connections, benchmark performance in 15 different ways, and calculate the return on investment (ROI) of hires.
One standout feature of the BI platform is the M&A tool, which delivers in seconds what would take consultants months to analyze. By cross-referencing data from law firms and in-house attorneys, the tool identifies shared work histories, alumni movements, and law school connections, proving invaluable for understanding career trajectories, identifying talent pools, and leveraging professional networks.
Addressing Common Challenges and Delivering Data-Driven Solutions
Leopard Solutions recognizes that the challenges faced by midsize law firms are often the same as those confronted by larger firms, differing only in scale. All firms grapple with issues like recruitment, retention, profitability, business development, and competitive insight. With Leopard Solutions’ comprehensive platform, firms of all sizes can access the data and insights necessary to address these challenges effectively.
By providing a robust and inclusive platform, Leopard Solutions delivers solutions for market insights, recruitment, profitability, and business growth. The platform is grounded in solid data, ensuring users have the information to make informed, data-driven decisions.
A Commitment to Excellence and Data Accuracy
Central to Leopard Solutions’ success is its relentless pursuit of the most accurate and timely data made available to its clients. The company collects information on law firms, in-house companies, and open jobs, updating it more frequently and accurately than any other provider in the industry. The data is curated, verified by human experts, and subjected to a rigorous normalization process, ensuring that clients receive only the highest-quality insights.
This attention to detail enables Leopard Solutions to offer unparalleled intelligence on attorneys, law firms, and the legal market. The platform tracks current trends and maintains a historical record of attorney movements, allowing users to analyze an attorney’s career path or the evolution of a law firm over time.
The Future: Democratizing Data for Midsize and Small Firms
With the recent integration with SurePoint, Leopard Solutions aims to democratize data again, this time for midsize and small law firms. By combining financial and people intelligence, the platform will provide these firms with the same insights and data-driven decision-making tools that larger firms have long enjoyed.
Leopard Solutions has come a long way since its inception as a simple list of New York associates. Today, it is a pioneer and leader in legal intelligence, offering comprehensive, real-time data and insights that enable firms to stay competitive, make informed decisions, and drive strategic growth. With its recent acquisition by SurePoint, Leopard Solutions is poised to continue transforming the legal industry, empowering firms of all sizes to leverage data for success in an ever-evolving legal landscape.
By maintaining its commitment to excellence, accuracy, and innovation, Leopard Solutions will undoubtedly remain an indispensable resource for law firms, recruiters, corporations, and legal professionals seeking to navigate the complexities of the legal market with confidence and clarity.
