Role: Lead Product Designer
Timeline: 7 Months
Company: Wolters Kluwer
Product Category: Enterprise B2B SaaS | LegalTech Platform
Core Team: Lead Designer (myself), 1 UX Researcher, 1 Engineer, and 1 Product Manager
Impact and Benefits
Impact at a Glance
Accelerated outside counsel selection by transforming a manual RFP process into a live, competitive auction experience.
Gave legal teams granular control over transparency, balancing cost pressure with fairness and firm relationships.
Created a single, auditable workflow that reduced back-and-forth emails, spreadsheets, and one-off negotiations.
Business & User Benefits
Cost Optimization: Reverse auctions encourage firms to sharpen pricing in real time, helping corporate legal reduce engagement costs while maintaining quality.
Configurable Transparency: Multiple auction modes (no, partial, and full transparency) allow legal teams to align bidding dynamics with matter sensitivity, market norms, and firm relationship strategies.
Operational Efficiency: Centralizing invitations, bidding, and selection in one platform reduces administrative overhead and shortens decision timelines.
Better Decision Intelligence: Real-time analytics and AI-enhanced insights give buyers a clearer view of price trends, value propositions, and proposal alignment, not just lowest cost.
Stronger Governance: A consistent, system-driven process improves auditability and compliance while reducing the risk of informal or opaque selection practices.
Product Overview
LegalCollaborator now includes a dynamic reverse auction bidding system, giving corporate legal departments a faster, data-driven way to source outside counsel.
Using real-time competitive bidding, legal teams can benchmark law-firm proposals, compare pricing structures, and enhance cost transparency , replacing manual RFPs with an intelligent, centralized process.
The Objective
Enable legal departments to:
Automate and streamline law-firm selection
Choose transparency levels across auction formats.
Drive data-driven decisions-making with live analytics
Key Features of Auction Bidding
Auction Types
No Transparency: Law firms can only see their bids and proposal details.
Partial Transparency: Law firms can view their bids and competitor bid values without competitor identities.
Full Transparency: Law firms can view their bids, competitor bid values, and competitor identities.
Auction Workflows
Auction Transparency Levels
No Transparency: Law firms view only their own bids and proposals.
Partial Transparency: Law firms view competitor bid amounts but not identities.
Full Transparency: Law firms view both competitor bids and identities.
AI-Enhanced Bidding Insights
Smart analytics highlight bid competitivness, pricing trends, and proposal alignment in real time.
Generative AI summaries surface the key differentiators between law-firm proposals for quick evaluation.
Real-Time Auction Dynamics
Live dashboard displays all active bids and ranking shifts as firms update pricing.
Law firms receive instant feedback when their bid is undercut, allowing dynamic adjustments.
Legal teams can monitor auction activity and performance metrics from a single control panel.
Outcome Integration
Automatically aligns winning bids with pre-defined scope, pricing, and value thresholds.
Notifications and confirmations sent directly through LegalCollaborator.
Workflow Overview
For Legal Departments
Create an engagement
Select auction type
Configure pricing parameters and transparency settings
Draft invitations and distribute to law firms.
For Law FIrms
Accept or decline participation
Confirm conflict status with proposal, if any.
Submit initial proposal and participate in live bidding.
Adjust bids in real time to remain competitive.
Use Cases
Corporate legal departments running high-value, multi-firm RFPs — such as litigation, M&A, or large compliance projects — can leverage reverse auctions to achieve cost optimization and transparency while ensuring quality representation.
Law firms use these auctions to demonstrate value, adjust strategy dynamically, and remain competitive in data-driven procurement environments.
Deliverables
DashBoard
Proposal Comparison Screens
Active Timer
