Wolters Kluwer
2022 - 2023
Phase 1: Competitive Bidding (MVP)
Replaces manual email and spreadsheet RFPs with one structured platform for selecting outside counsel.
Overview
Replacing Email and Spreadsheets With a Single Source of Truth
LegalCollaborator replaces email and spreadsheet RFPs with one structured platform for corporate legal teams to select outside counsel. 20% reduction in RFP management time, 15% increase in user satisfaction, Global Innovation Awards (LegalTech) finalist, shipped with native integrations into TyMetrix 360 and Passport.
Problem
Weeks of Manual Work, No Visibility Into What Mattered
Legal ops ran outside counsel selection over email and spreadsheets. RFP formats varied firm to firm, proposals couldn't be compared side by side, and nobody had visibility into spend, staffing, or past performance. Selection took weeks and left audit gaps.
Research
What 40+ Interviews Revealed About Broken Tooling
40+ interviews across corporate legal departments and law firms, plus four competitors benchmarked.
Four patterns came up repeatedly: fragmented tooling across Office, Jira, and SAP Ariba, capacity constraints (time and staffing, not strategy), non-standard and heavily regulated pricing, and internal misalignment between attorneys, pricing managers, and legal ops.
The gap: no competitor offered native ELM integration, flexible templates, post-engagement performance data, or a DEI-aware platform for both sides.
Ideation
Designing for Two Sides of the Same Engagement
Six personas, three client-side and three firm-side, shaped two parallel workflows. Key decisions: a comparison view evaluating firms on more than price, and treating security and system handoffs (Passport, TyMetrix 360) as UX problems designed alongside engineering, not backend constraints.
Designs
From "Can't Find It" to the Most-Valued Feature on the Platform
Round 1 testing showed the concept resonated but findability was the blocker, especially in drafting and comparison entry points.
Round 2 confirmed the fixes worked. The comparison dashboard became the highest-valued feature, with the side-by-side firm view and audit trails called out specifically. Shipped before launch: dashboard report export, post-selection notifications, comparison page export, currency/compliance handling, and guidelines surfaced at the point of selection.
