Draftable Legal and iManage join forces to deliver a seamless document comparison integration for lawyers

When the Draftable team began developing Draftable Legal, they first held dozens of interviews with legal experts worldwide to understand their specific requirements.

One critical need that stood out was a seamless integration with iManage, the leading Document and Email Management System (DMS), trusted by some of the world’s biggest law firms. Lawyers told the Draftable team that a smooth iManage integration was essential for fast and efficient workflows.

Led by their user-centric approach, Draftable joined forces with iManage to deliver the reliable integration that customers were asking for.

We take a closer look at how the collaboration between Draftable Legal and iManage helped deliver an intuitive document comparison solution to the legal industry.

“The ability to make document comparisons within lawyers’ day-to-day workflows is a fundamental requirement, especially as these documents can be copious in length. With lawyers typically spending a significant part of their day in iManage, this integration with Draftable Legal will deliver efficiency and productivity gains, freeing up time for more high-value activities. We are delighted to partner with Draftable Legal.”
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- Dean Leung, Executive Vice President of Digital Enablement and Communities, iManage

Why did Draftable create a document comparison solution for lawyers?

Trusted by over 750 global customers and with more than 10 million documents compared, Draftable has been the most popular general-purpose document comparison solution for 12 years.

In 2021, experts from the legal industry approached Draftable as they needed a document comparison solution specifically for legal workflows. It had to be efficient, accurate, reliable, and user-friendly. It also needed to have great customer support and fair and transparent pricing.

Many customers also turned to Draftable because they needed a solution that would integrate with the latest version of iManage. After the recent market consolidation of some popular document comparison providers, customers using these solutions were notified that support was being discontinued. One of the issues reported was that when firms updated to iManage 10, the integration between their legacy document comparison solution and iManage was no longer workable.  

As firms began to look for a document comparison solution that supported an active iManage integration, Draftable Legal emerged as an alternative.  

Building a document comparison solution with intuitive iManage integration

The driving force behind Draftable Legal is that it’s designed to adapt to lawyers – not the other way around. Because of this, Draftable collaborated directly with iManage, combining expertise from both teams to build a smooth integration.  

Here are some of the custom features of Draftable Legal’s iManage integration:

Familiar interface

Since users are already familiar with the iManage interface, the team worked with iManage to use their native design throughout the Draftable Legal interface where Draftable integrates with iManage.

As a result, users don’t need any formal training with Draftable Legal as they can instantly start navigating through a familiar interface.  This collaborative design is critical for proper interoperability and efficient legal workflows.

Adaptable to software settings

As software environments vary between firms, Draftable worked closely with iManage to build an integration that can be deployed in all our customers’ environments. This included creating step-by-step documentation for deploying in On-Premises and modern iManage Cloud environments. Draftable also worked with iManage to build diagnostic tools to help customers deploy successfully in their unique environments.

Different options for the same function

Draftable and iManage teams also ensured they built different options for the same function, so users can choose how they like working best.

Here are some examples:

• Uploading files: Users can easily drag and drop files from iManage, or upload files by browsing iManage in the Draftable launcher. Users can also easily select and change the versions of iManage documents from within the Draftable launcher without needing to reupload the files.
• Launching comparisons: Users can launch comparisons directly from within iManage via right-click or by clicking the Draftable button.
• Saving comparison output: Users can save output directly into iManage (as a new version of an existing document or as a new document) directly from the viewer, without having to save it locally first.

Draftable’s Commercial Director, Brendan McGreevy, said:

‍“Working with the iManage team was a fantastic experience. Their insights, flexibility and support were pivotal in building an active integration that caters directly to lawyers. We’re grateful for our productive partnership with iManage which has helped us deliver a reliable document comparison solution to the legal industry.”

Law firms adopting Draftable Legal with seamless iManage integration

Draftable Legal has been adopted by over 200 firms in its first six months, with most customers requiring iManage integration. Here are some of their success stories:

Sparke Helmore

Australian law firm Sparke Helmore needed their document comparison tool to integrate with iManage so lawyers could easily run file comparisons directly from the DMS.

The Draftable team provided rapid development of new iManage features requested by the firm, including the option to change file name outputs while saving to iManage to match the compared document file names and having end-user authentication enabled via Group Policy, to save lawyers’ time in setting up their iManage integration.

Draftable’s developers also built an application to collect diagnostics from iManage, resulting 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

Read more: Sparke Helmore’s successful shift to Draftable Legal

Gallagher & Kennedy

US law firm Gallagher & Kennedy also required iManage integration to improve workflow efficiency. After switching to Draftable Legal, the firm said:

“Draftable has been so much easier to deploy and manage than the legacy comparison tool we previously used. The Draftable developers did a great job in showing how Group Policy can be used for implementation, which we easily rolled out across 150 users. “The way technology evolves, the smaller companies tend to have a competitive advantage as they can focus on the products and customer service in a way that the bloated legacy companies cannot match.”
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- Steve Slack, Information Technology Manager, Gallagher & Kennedy

Read more: Gallagher & Kennedy’s successful transition to Draftable Legal

Listening to customers is key

The team behind Draftable Legal attribute their initial success to strong partnerships and listening to customers to create the solution they need. In this case, customers were asking for iManage integration, and the team successfully delivered it by combining the expertise of Draftable and iManage.

When asked what’s next for Draftable, Product Lead Dr Caspar Roxburgh said:

“When creating Draftable Legal, we aimed to build a reliable solution so lawyers could achieve fast and efficient document comparison workflows. The response from law firms suggests we have been successful in our mission so far, but it doesn’t end there.

We’re committed to continuous improvement, having recently released new features such as Bulk Compare, which enables users to run hundreds of comparisons at once. We’ve also got an exciting roadmap of new features coming soon, including an interactive change list for redline outputs, and a 'one-click' quick compare option. We’ll keep listening to our customers to build the features they need and ensure they’ll always love using Draftable Legal.”

You can try Draftable Legal for free, with all features enabled including our iManage integration. Start a free trial or contact our experts to learn more.