By Ryan Tan in Side Letter — 02 Nov 2026

The Co-Founders

Five co-founders. Not one was there on day one.

Five claims to a founding, against the only record of it that anyone had to file. Illustration: Unaudited.

Ask five people who started a restaurant and you will get five answers. Ask whoever signed the lease and you will get one.

Five men have described themselves, or been described, as founders or co-founders of Lawpath. Paul Lupson was one in March 2013. Nick Abrahams dates his to 2013 and says it continues. Damien Andreasen was called one in 2014 and again in 2015. Dominic Woolrych became "founder and chief" in 2019. Thomas Willis dates his to May 2017, three years after joining as digital marketing manager.

On 30 May 2013, the day Lawpath Holdings Pty Ltd was registered, its directors were Philip Morle and Simone Abrahams. Its secretary was Clare Hallam. Its address was an incubator's.

None of the five was a director that day. Three of them have never been directors at all. The lease, in this case, is a company extract, and it has two other names on it.

A day later. Dominic Woolrych, Lawpath’s chief executive, wrote on LinkedIn that “Tom and I started Lawpath together in 2014”, and that more than 650,000 businesses have now used Lawpath.

His own profile, on the same site, says he joined Lawpath as head of legal in December 2014. Mr Willis’s says he joined in July 2014 as digital marketing manager, and dates his co-founder title to May 2017. Lawpath Holdings Pty Ltd was registered on 30 May 2013.

The restatement is welcome. On their own accounts the two arrived five months apart in 2014, by which time Lawpath Holdings had been on the register for over a year, one as digital marketing manager and the other as head of legal.

Founder is not an office. It carries no statutory duty and appears on no form. It is the single part of a company's history that is written entirely by the people who want it written.

So it is worth reading next to the parts that had to be filed.

Paul Lupson

On 18 March 2013 the Global Legal Post reported the launch of an Australian start-up developed by the "technology incubator Pollenzier", offering up to thirty minutes with a lawyer for $29. It quoted "LawPath co-founder and CEO Paul Lupson" on how eagerly technology businesses were taking up the subscription.

Fourteen months later he was still the chief executive, quoted by SmartCompany on the arrival of Brook Adcock's $600,000.

He has never been a director of Lawpath Holdings. He does not appear on its share register in 2016, in 2017, in 2018, or at any point since.