A global law firm approached Harmeston Consulting for support with a technology transition that had become more than just a software swap. After being pushed to adopt anew transactional collaboration tool through a vendor acquisition, the firm's lawyers found themselves dissatisfied with the replacement product. Low adoption, feature gaps, and poor user experience led the firm to explore alternatives. With Harmeston’s guidance, they successfully transitioned to a more user-focused platform that is now being embraced across the business.

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The client’s original tool, Workshare Transact, was a popular document collaboration platform used primarily by their real estate and banking teams.After it was acquired and replaced by Litera Transact, users became frustrated by missing functionality and poor usability. The firm wanted to find a more intuitive and robust alternative, ensuring it met the needs of lawyers and clients alike. Harmeston’s role was to support the selection and implementation of the new tool, ensuring minimal disruption and successful long-term adoption.

The Litera Transact system was not delivering the experience users had come to expect, and adoption rates across the firm were falling. Some lawyers began resorting to unsanctioned alternatives, which introduced compliance risks. A new solution was urgently needed, but any transition would require careful consideration of data migration, system integration, and user engagement.Additionally, the system was not the source of truth for client records, so any change had to be coordinated closely with the firm’s core document management system, iManage.

The firm identified Legatics, a focused startup specialising in transactional workspaces, as a promising alternative. Harmeston took the firm back to basics, gathering business and technical requirements before conducting a light-touch due diligence and evaluation process. Through additional demos, user feedback, and validation against firm-wide needs, the team confirmed that Legatics could meet the firm's expectations. Harmeston then led the commercial negotiations, contract finalisation, and implementation planning.

A detailed change management and communications plan followed. Users were encouraged to self-archive content from Litera Transact, and a clear go-live date was communicated to avoid new matters being added to the old system. Though Litera Transact’s permission settings limited technical restrictions, Harmeston supported teams directly when needed, helping them move any remaining content across to Legatics.

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The transition from Litera Transact to Legatics was delivered smoothly, with minimal disruption and high user engagement. Harmeston’s early planning and support helped reduce risk and workload by empowering users to manage much of the archiving themselves. The firm came off Litera Transact completely in December and is now using Legatics as its enterprise-wide transactional collaboration tool. Integration with iManage is also in development, expanding the value of the new platform. Initial adoption has been strong, and the knowledge team has now begun rolling the tool out to other practice areas across the business.