Litera Transact
Multi-user collaboration in a digital workspace
Litera’s legal technology solutions serve over 2 million legal professionals internationally and 99% of the Am Law 100 firms. Transact is 1 of the 5 SaaS offerings to help attorneys focus on what matters.
Role:
I was a UX team of one as the first in-house designer for Transact and responsible for all design aspects in the product. In this project, I was leading the design strategy for increased collaboration in the tool. I partnered closely with my cross-functional teammates (including Project Managers, Customer Success Managers, and Engineering) and presented to leadership regularly.
Challenge:
To take our single user model and upgrade it into a multi-user model to improve communication, document management and information flow across 130 firms and thousands of Daily Active Users (DAU).
Overview
Context
Transact was created to mimic the processes of a traditional legal workflow:
Platform Area of Focus
The area of the deal cycle focused on in this case study is managing the deal. This involves tracking multiple documents (uploads, revisions, and final drafts) and parties as the transaction progresses, and requires quick reporting so stakeholders can easily understand the status of each checklist item.
all team members can manage a checklist and work on items
external collaborators could view documents
signature pages could be sent to relevant parties
Similar to a traditional workflow:
only one long comment was available at a time
there was no review process for documents
permissions for who could see what were complicated
Different to a traditional workflow:
While many collaborative components were mirrored from a print and paper legacy to a digital world, most communication still fell to emails, phone calls, and meetings outside of Transact for shared decision making and joint work across the firm as well as with external collaborators.
User Problem:
Frequent switching between applications resulted in poorly documented decisions, reduced productivity, and increased user frustration.
Business Problem:
Reduced activity in the platform led to lower retention rates as competitors offered more collaborative features.
Persona Cards
Each persona along with different needs, spends a different amount of time in the product
To make our platform the all in one digital hub users’ wanted it to be, I proposed a multistep approach that focused on features allowing collaboration both internally and externally in the tool. The goals in mind were to improve the overall workflow in the platform, keep users on more consistently, and increase collaboration. We would define success as an increase in DAU, time spent per session, and by tracking what areas of the platform were clicked most.
The features below are some of the improvements that accomplished our goals. Keeping reading for a walk through the discovery and research process or skip ahead to the final deliverables.
Features Summary:
Status Notes
Automatic Comparison
Approvals*
Permissions*
* not highlighted in this case studyResearch
Identifying the problem
Feedback from users was typically gathered by our PMs and Head of Product on customer calls via those that filled out the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) while activity in the platform was tracked through Heap.
There is extensive bureaucracy in this field so I needed to not only get buy in to talk to users, but establish connections before reaching out to users myself. I relied on recorded past meetings with users and attended some as well (~10) to get an idea of where areas of friction were present in their experiences.
Insights:
With some users using up to 6 different tools at a time, they end up spending a significant amount of time bouncing between tools instead of getting as much work done as they wanted to complete.
One person completing a task in Transact and then handing it off to the next
Common across firms:
Not wanting to invite others onto the platform because they had privacy concerns about what they’d be able to see
Needing to talk outside of the tool and tell their co-counsel to take over using Transact instead of working in tandem
Privacy concerns seemed to be the biggest driver for not inviting external collaborators, showing a potential area of improvement to increase both conversion and adoption rates.
Time spent outside of Transact:
editing documents
communicating/documenting the edits
getting approval for document drafts
sending redacted versions of the checklist to external parties via email
Competitive Analysis
I picked 2 tools our users were using for collaboration as well as 2 competitors for analysis which included Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Closing Binder and Legatics. From this, I was looking for inspiration as well as parameters to help set the direction for potential features and gaps.
Some of my suggestions to improve in Transact were easier tracing back of communication via status notes and suggestions on documents, attaching users to comment data and task assignment, more granular permissions under roles, and real-time notifications.
Constraints & Challenges
State of Transact:
The initial constraints in this project came from the logistics of being the only designer on the product. I only had so much time to deliver features to multiple engineering teams. And making sure I had enough work ready before they started their next sprints wasn’t always easy.
I would classify the UX maturity of the organization as Limited based on the NNGroup’s definition. I didn’t have any prior design assets to work off of so I was designing things from screenshots as I went along and simultaneously creating reusable components for myself. And since much of the platform was put together from products we acquired, there was a lack of consistency across modules and accessibility issues that needed to be addressed.
Technical:
Transact did not allow editing of a document within it so there would still be some amount of collaboration happening outside of the tool.
Legal permissions are pessimistic by nature and the default is to restrict access when it comes to information sharing. This challenge led to the previous settings functionality being more of an allow list and made it hard to see who had access to what specific documents.
Improving this experience would mean a larger re-architecture of the system. We ended up deciding as a product team that for a better experience it would be necessary so we didn’t leave users unclear about access restrictions for potentially 50+ counsel at a time. Hopefully leading to quicker onboarding and increased adoption in the future.
Final Deliverables
Status Notes
Automatic Comparison
Feature Summary:
Status Notes
Overview
Status notes was a feature being used by the firms as a way to comment on a recent upload in a checklist item. The capabilities were limited to just one note, which any user who logged in could override or add to.
1. The previous section for status notes was one infinite text box.
2. Any user with access to the deal would be able to edit this box freely.
3. As the text box expanded any information below would continuously be pushed toward the bottom.
How might we… help users communicate more effectively?
User Stories:
As a Paralegal / Legal Assistant, I want to inform Associates of updates on documentation so they can review it
As an Associate, I want to know what stage a document is in so I can review it
New Interactions:
Add a new note (create)
See who wrote a note (read)
Edit note (update)
Delete note (delete)
1. Repositioning the Signature toggle allowed for more visibility as the notes panel expanded 2. This new pattern enables a quick view of the most recent note and ability to navigate to previous ones as well as write a new one
3. Users are now able to see the timestamp for when a note was added 4. User accounts are now attached to the notes written
5. Users are able to see previous note history with names and times 6. Users are able to edit and delete note that are their own
This feature was updated to have a historical record of status notes with authors and timestamps to track the progress of line items and allow collaborative commenting among users.
As V1 of this was rolled out, it led the way for future improvements of seeing a specific users notes’ history and tagging users in notes.
Looking Forward:
Automatic Comparison
Overview
When comparing updates between documents, our users didn’t want to have to navigate back and forth between Word to see changes made and then Transact to make sure the most recent line items’ document was correct.
While we had the functionality to show these changes in Transact, only 32% of our user base was actively using this feature. I hypothesized this was because the steps to get there didn’t offer an easy way know what could be compared nor did it provide storage of comparison documents directly in the checklist.
When validating, the first step was to see where users were getting stuck.
1. Previously the automatic comparison function we had was hidden until clicking into the document.
2. In the document viewer hid both the comparison feature as well as previous uploads.
3. This feature only let a user compare their most recent document to the immediate previously uploaded one.
4. The comparison would also live here.
How might we… make comparing documents more visible?
How might we… minimize navigation outside of Transact?
User Stories:
As a Paralegal / Legal Assistant, I want easy access to redlines so I can review them
As an Associate, I want to have all relevant documents in the checklist to review and make sure the team is on task
Improvements:
Consistent UI utilizing Fluent UI and custom components
Comparison interaction integrated into a high traffic area
New section for all documents to live in
1. A new section for documents lets the Overview tab be less crowded and gives one place for all document organization 2. The interaction to compare documents now lives in a place users interact with frequently
3. This modal is aligned with Fluent UI’s patterns and specifies only 2 documents can be compared at a time
4. Comparisons now live in the Documents tabs for easy visibility
This feature was brought forward and placed in a high traffic clicking area. Improvements in the flow simplified the way users compared documents by keeping them in the checklist and eliminated the step of saving redlines to the desktop first.
Impact & Takeaways
Product:
As a result of adding these new features, we
Regained 2 previously lost firms
Increased time spent per session by 26%
NPS scores showed an average increase by 3 points
DAUs increased 38%
The “add note” button for Status Notes became the most clicked interaction 3 weeks post rollout
I would have tried to find the unique MAU as a better metric for how many users were in the tool within a typical deal lifecycle
By offering these features, Litera Transact enhances collaboration, efficiency, and oversight in legal transactions, making it easier for teams to manage complex deals and ensure that every detail is accounted for.
Personal:
Increased UX Maturity of my organization by adding in design processes, getting access to users for UXR, implementing a design system, and creating components unique to Transact
Gained more practice in strategic thinking, aligning design strategies with business objectives, taking on a leadership role, and guiding teams and stakeholders through the design process