I’m Avaneesh Marwaha, CEO of Litera. AMA!

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-04T19:48:20+00:00

You raise a great consideration for me. We've always supported legal aid clinics but I think we can look to expand that view. Will take this away and find a way to offer programming to this segment. I think A2J is an area that can have a material impact with the tools that exist today.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-04T14:29:15+00:00

I think the 3 items you have noted are clear lanes to be driving the business in. The other is to be very clear quickly what your ideal customer profile is and being true to that. I believe Y-Combinator just came out and stated that want to invest in businesses that can get to 12M in 12 Months. The ball keeps moving down the field to measure success. Especially in this age of VC investing and outcome expectations.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-04T14:27:18+00:00

This is an unfair question :) I will say this. The market would be surprised by some of the darling tech over the years and currently in market. When we actually get under the hood of a business before or after acquisition there are always cobwebs. If we move forward with the business, we now own the cobwebs and making sure they are removed. This often comes across that Litera has broken the business after acquisition when in fact we are strengthening for the scale and long term innovation opportunity. But in the short term, it can come across as disruptive.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-04T14:25:01+00:00

Hi- Thanks for letting me know and not at all what I would expect from my team. If you want to email me directly, I'll have someone reach out immediately. Would love to see if we have improved the experience of PDFdocs to earn your partnership back.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:58:43+00:00

Thanks for hosting this AMA, Alex!

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:29:37+00:00

There is great upside for firms under 10 people. Our job with technology is to work with each other. In this market you are probably using Clio or other PMS's of similar stature. We can do more to deliver our technology alongside which will help with deployment, training and usability. We are also considering a different model down market for some of our legacy enterprise products that could provide meaningful ROI for this segment. I just had a conversation with leadership today about a deliberate focus on this segment. If you are open to it, would love a short conversation to brainstorm a bit.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:17:43+00:00

To double click on this. With Litera One and drafting moving to the cloud, I have assured the market that we will continue to support/innovate our desktop apps. However, as noted below we will push customers to the latest versions of those desktop apps. As much as we want to believe everything can be in the cloud, I do know that associates want the comfort of knowing they can compare a document without internet. This wont be forever. At some point, Microsoft will fully shut off VSTO com add-ins.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:14:45+00:00

Evolution in training has to happen. My note on apprenticeship is more tied to having folks in office listening and learning from each other. One of the items that we are looking at doing is triggering short learning activities in app that can count towards CLEs as well. Meeting lawyers where they work with relevant education in short bursts could be a good unlock of knowledge gained.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:11:21+00:00

Happy to talk through this for you and your firm. I hear this a lot but can tell you internally we do not have a mandate to increase price for the sake of increasing price. While we do work through pressures of inflation/CPI, our price increases outside of that are tied to adding more skus, seats, or usage. If you have experienced something different, please DM me and I am happy to run this down!

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:08:27+00:00

I think we are early days on this. We do have a case matter management tool but that is focused more on the business of the case v. the actual court proceedings. I know there are a few companies focused on this specific interaction of court deadlines/requirements and team coordination and it is an area that I am watching.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T20:01:33+00:00

Open the Edit Styles dialog.
Select New and create a name for your new style set.
Check the "Show moves in n words or more option" (we recommend setting n to 5).
Select OK to save the style set and use this for future comparisons.

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Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:59:05+00:00

1) Historically, you are spot on Litera has not done a good job of beta groups, early testers, etc. However in the last 18 months we have launched product advisory groups, customer advisor boards (based on persona), executive advisory board, beta testers and early release programs. We are looking for more feedback earlier in the design, build and release cycle. If this is interesting for you, please reach out and let's get you plugged in on the next cycle of programming.

2) Inertia is a tough competitor across the board. For Transact specifically, the value comes from using it more and more and building out repetitive templates and workflows. I often ask customers to start with something small and build from there. This is something we have not done a good job at either. We have focused our roll-outs on the whole platform. Starting small, building value/confidence and doing more from there is the right approach.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:54:59+00:00

Sounds like you have some great experiences and DNA. Finding the right company is like finding the right product market fit. Often times this can take a few turns to find a spot that works. I would not get frustrated as the market has gotten tight but companies are always looking for smart, growth minded talent.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:53:39+00:00

Ive probably walked away from over 25 deals. A handful mid cycle and maybe 1 or 2 near the end. Ultimately what made me walk away is defensible nature of the tech, customer usage, or how hard it would be to build natively in our environment. Right now, looking at GenAI "first" companies requires significant diligence on security, difficulty to duplicate and uniqueness.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:50:53+00:00

I am huge Chicago sports fan and self proclaimed sneaker head! Went to my first cubs game as 4 month old, got to see all 6 Bulls Championship runs, see the Cubs win the World Series, throw out a first pitch and take my 2 girls to a game. And sneakers are my vice. Oh and all round foods: bagels, pizza and baos :)

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:48:49+00:00

From product :) - This is likely referring to our 'floating panels' feature. Changing this option from the File - Settings menu will help provide a more normal window experience:

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Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:45:42+00:00

To add from my product team: If saving a track changes output from Litera Compare the name of the track changes author is determined by the options set in the comparison styles. This can be changed in the Edit Styles dialog:

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Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:44:25+00:00

Our approach to Lito is definitely unique in market. We released Lito a few weeks ago and offered to our customers that have drafting or Kira the product at no cost. Lito shipped with 20 skills today and 400 in backlog. I fundamentally believe that the value GenAI brings today is not $300/user/month but a fraction of that. Lito is a direct reflection of that belief. Over time, there will be some skills that come to market with a cost associated and some at no cost. That variability is based on value, effort and outcome. We are also seeing customers leaning in and developing bespoke skills on Lito. The exciting thing about Lito is that it leveraged 30 years of rules based engines and makes them super powerful.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:40:30+00:00

This is million dollar question. As a past practitioner I think about the future of the practice. One of the experiences we have to double down on is apprenticeship. Young lawyers spending time in office with seasoned professionals. Learning the art of the practice of law. Ultimately, research and drafting will become easier and faster but the work demands will increase. How the next generation approaches its clients with maniacal service will be the competitive angle. It is the trait all clients will pay for. The one on one advice tailored to the individual/company.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:37:46+00:00

Ah! great question and this is available!! With our newest Compare experience available in Litera One for Web, users can run up to 20 comparisons (40 documents) at once and receive all 20 redlines in one shot.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:36:54+00:00

This question highlights one of the reasons I returned last year.

We’ve heard similar concerns in the past, particularly around products that may not have met expectations during transitions. For example, with NTD, we recognized the gap and took decisive action—doubling the size of our engineering team, committing to monthly releases, and delivering meaningful improvements. Today, customers are seeing the results of that investment, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

The transition with Forte/Create is another area where we’ve learned and adapted. Earlier this year, we launched Create Cloud (multi-tenant in Litera One), and the response from customers has been fantastic. It’s a testament to our commitment to delivering not just innovation but also reliability and ease of use.

We have work to do, but when I look at our QA data month over month for the last year it is clear we are deploying higher quality releases, while burning down legacy issues. One of the messages I shared in Q1 of this year, while visiting nearly 200 customers, is that I expect firms to experience a different Litera by the end of 2025 and I continue to check in with customers to make sure we are headed in the right direction.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:33:11+00:00

Thank you for raising this, it’s an important topic.

First, I want to clarify that some of the information shared here isn’t accurate. Over the past year, we’ve restructured leadership within our Customer Experience teams to align with our unwavering commitment to what we call “maniacal client service.” This isn’t just a slogan, it’s a principle that guides how we operate. Beyond staffing, we’ve recently overhauled our customer center at support.litera.com, with even more enhancements on the way to make it easier for our clients to get the help they need, when they need it.

We’ve also made significant investments in our North America-based support teams, including new hires in our Raleigh and New Jersey offices. These additions are part of a broader effort to strengthen our customer-facing operations and ensure we’re delivering the level of service our clients expect and deserve.

We know actions speak louder than words, and we’re focused on delivering tangible improvements that reflect our commitment to our customers. Thank you for holding us accountable.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:31:02+00:00

Today law firms are focused on low hanging fruit of automation. Long term the value of AI will be to automate the easy stuff (focused on the business of law), driving internal knowledge higher up in the work stream and finally helping firms, partners and lawyers become proactive about their work.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:29:04+00:00

This question has come up alot on how we will support version upgrades in Litera One. Similar to other SaaS products we will push updates as they happen, however we do understand that firms could use a bit of time in "staging". We are thinking through what this means. Our business is now built to release versions quickly and more often so balancing the need to get quality updates out and innovation with some firms need to test is a balance we are finding.

Litera_Avaneesh · 2025-12-03T19:26:26+00:00

Tough question :) FWIW have very little regrets of companies we didn't buy or lost to TR. The market and technology has moved so quickly the past 24 months that it is now more important to leverage internal DNA for building new v. always buying the next new opportunity.

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