Document management and workflow automation platform originally developed for law firms and legal departments, now expanded to banking, insurance, clinics, and public sector. The legal module integrates graphical workflow automation, DMS, case/matter management, machine learning, and mass litigation support. Also offers a QMS module for quality/compliance/audit management. Developed by 42DBS GmbH, Munich, founded 2017. Primarily DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Revenue trajectory: $3.2M (2021) → $1.6M (2023) → $2.9M (2024) per Latka — revenue halved before recovering. 8,500 customers (ARPU ~$341/year suggests significant low-tier/freemium base alongside enterprise). 11-50 employees. Pricing: €149/month SaaS for full suite with cloud hosting (G2 pricing page). Reviews: G2 4.6/5 (12 reviews), Capterra/SoftwareAdvice 4.7/5 (10 reviews). Bootstrapped.
Who It’s For
- In-house legal departments in DACH companies needing integrated document and workflow management
- Law firms in German-speaking markets looking for case management with automated workflows
- Compliance teams managing regulatory obligations alongside legal workflows
What We Haven’t Verified
- Full English-language product localisation — website has English pages but depth of localisation for non-DACH markets is unclear
- Machine learning feature specifics are not detailed
- Mass litigation automation capabilities and scale limits
- Revenue halved between 2021-2023 before recovering — cause unknown
- 8,500 customers across legal and non-legal verticals — breakdown unknown
Workflows
Based on practitioner evidence, ShakeSpeare Software is used in these workflows:
What practitioners struggle with
Real frustrations from legal professionals — the problems ShakeSpeare Software addresses (or should address). Sourced from practitioner reviews, Reddit threads, and case studies.
Documents scattered across email, shared drives, attorney desktops, and filing cabinets — paralegal can't find the key document when it's needed for court or a deposition
Firm uses separate tools for intake, documents, billing, and e-signatures that don't talk to each other — opening a new matter means entering the same client info 4 times across systems that should but don't share data
Corporate legal department manages 500+ matters across 30 outside firms but has no single source of truth — matter details live in email chains, budget approvals happen via PDF attachments, and when the GC asks 'how many active IP matters do we have in EMEA and what's the projected spend?' the answer takes a paralegal two days to compile from scattered spreadsheets
Associate or paralegal spends 2-3 hours daily on repetitive administrative tasks — entering time, filing documents to the right matter folder, updating case status fields, sending routine client update emails — and the firm can't hire more support staff at current margins, but the billable-hour leakage from this admin work costs more than the hire would
Where it fits in your workflow
Community Data
Loading practitioner-sourced data…