Sparke Helmore’s successful shift to Draftable Legal

The legal document comparison market has gone through a significant shake-up in the last six months. With the move to end support for Workshare Compare and CompareDocs, firms relying on these solutions have been forced to look for an alternative legal comparison solution.

This was the situation facing the Australian law firm Sparke Helmore. In looking to make the switch to a new provider, their top priorities were cost-effectiveness and customer support to ensure a seamless transition without a drop in performance. Producing over half a million documents each year and running daily document comparisons, finding the right document comparison software was crucial for the firm.

This case study explores Sparke Helmore’s transition to Draftable Legal, showcasing how it successfully switched to a new document comparison software.

Sparke Helmore: An award-winning law firm with a 140-year history

Providing legal services to Australian and international businesses for over 140 years, Sparke Helmore has a considerable national presence, with a team of more than 850 people across Australia. The firm offers a wide range of legal services across six core areas of law — Corporate & Commercial, Commercial Insurance, Government, Property Environment & Finance, Statutory Lines of Insurance, and Workplace — with more than 30 specialised areas of expertise.

Searching for the right document comparison tool

For Sparke Helmore to switch to a new document comparison software, they had certain requirements that the solution had to meet. These requirements included:

• Matching or exceeding the performance of their existing tool.
• Being more cost-effective than their existing tool.
• Being provided with excellent customer support throughout the trial, deployment, and post-purchase phases.
• Including a roadmap of priorities that responded to the firm’s needs.
• Being seamlessly integrated without disrupting the workflow of their legal team.
• Integrating with iManage to enable lawyers to easily run file comparisons directly from the firm’s document management system.

A solution built for lawyers

Draftable provided a comprehensive solution. During the trial period, Draftable was receptive to suggestions and requirements provided by Sparke Helmore and gave hands-on support to quickly integrate changes. This approach resulted in an overall more effective product and one that Sparke Helmore were keen to implement as quickly as possible.

Direct integration support

Sparke Helmore encountered some difficulties while configuring iManage integrations. However, the developers at Draftable quickly built an application to collect iManage logs and accurately diagnose issues. Additionally, Draftable added new features to gather diagnostics from iManage, which resulted in an even smoother experience for Sparke Helmore.

“The team was responsive and available, raising support tickets with iManage on our behalf and getting on calls to talk through the configuration without disrupting the workflow of the team. It was great to see their commitment to product support improvement, even when the issues were outside of Draftable itself.”
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— Kyle Smith, Applications Manager, Sparke Helmore

Responsive feature development

Draftable provided rapid development of new features requested by Sparke Helmore to streamline workflow. These included:  

• Default firm-wide settings deployed during installation.
• Capability to default to the author of the compare markup to be only the user’s initials or user’s details based on their settings in MS Word.
• Option to change file name outputs while saving to iManage to match the compared document file names.
• End-user authentication enabled via Group Policy, saving lawyers’ time in setting up their iManage integration.

“We had a few specific product requests that helped our lawyers get the most out of the solution. The Draftable team went above and beyond to develop our feature requests and released them during the trial phase.”


— Kyle Smith, Applications Manager, Sparke Helmore

High performance & improved workflows

The accuracy, reliability, and speed of Draftable’s software ensured Sparke Helmore improved their workflows while maintaining high performance.

 “Our lawyers found the tool easy and intuitive to use and got it on the first go. They benefited from useful features like Draftable’s proprietary move algorithm, which has proven to be more accurate in detecting and showing when content has been moved within a document.”
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— Lee Hodge, IT Director, Sparke Helmore

Success in switching to an accurate, cost-effective document comparison

Sparke Helmore’s transition to Draftable Legal has resulted in several benefits.

The right solution means more time spent on the legal work

Sparke Helmore got the exact software they needed and has expressed appreciation for the user-friendly nature of the new system. The lawyers can focus on their legal work, knowing they can rely on the Draftable Legal comparison software.

Cost-effective

Sparke Helmore’s switch to Draftable resulted in immediate cost savings. Sparke Helmore knows it can budget efficiently and accurately, relying on Draftable’s fair and transparent pricing.

Customer satisfaction

Sparke Helmore's team was highly impressed with Draftable from the initial engagement to the ongoing care and responsiveness, including the rapid integration of their feedback and the development of new features. Sparke Helmore has been actively recommending Draftable Legal to other law firms, confident in the product's capabilities and the ability to partner for the long term.

Conclusion

Law firms may find software changes daunting, but Sparke Helmore’s experience with Draftable Legal shows that it doesn’t have to be with the right provider.

If you’re not happy with your current document comparison software or need to switch to a new provider because support for Workshare and CompareDocs has been discontinued, you can easily transition to Draftable Legal. Chat with our friendly team about your document comparison tool requirements and whether you need customised features.

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