Your guide to choosing the right legal software replacement – and why LawVu is the smart move.

Wolters Kluwer has officially announced the sunsetting of winra in 2025, marking the end of an era for many legal teams and departments across Germany that have relied on the platform for years. If you’re among them, you’re likely wondering: What now?

Whether you used winra for legal matter tracking, contract management or broader legal operations, this shift brings both disruption and opportunity.

The good news? There are more modern, efficient, intuitive platforms available today, including LawVu, which was built specifically to support in-house legal teams like yours.

Why is winra being sunset?

Winra was originally developed as an on-premise solution to help in-house legal teams manage contracts and documents. But as legal operations have evolved, so too have the expectations of legal teams, who now need more flexible, integrated and cloud-based tools. Unfortunately, WinRa, as a legacy system, hasn’t kept pace.

While Wolters Kluwer hasn’t provided an extensive rationale, decisions to sunset software like winra are typically driven by a few key factors:

• Technological obsolescence: Legacy platforms struggle to meet the demands of modern legal teams.
• Strategic product focus: Vendors often consolidate tools or shift investment to newer offerings.
• Customer demand: Legal teams increasingly want secure, cloud-based, and unified solutions.

In response to announcing the end-of-life for winra, Wolters Kluwer is encouraging customers to migrate to Legisway, their newer cloud-based alternative.

But for many legal teams, moving from winra to Legisway may not be the ideal next step. While Legisway introduces a more modern interface and contract-centric features, it still presents challenges:

• It remains heavily focused on contracts, requiring teams to manage matters, disputes, legal advice and spend in other tools.
• It can be complex to implement and manage, especially for smaller or stretched legal teams.
• Its limited integration across the business may continue the siloed approach many teams are trying to escape.

With winra sunsetting, legal teams have a rare opportunity – not just to replace a tool, but to rethink their tech stack and adopt a unified legal workspace that supports the full scope of their work.

What to look for in a winra replacement

As you evaluate legal tech alternatives, here’s a checklist to guide your selection process:

• Cloud-based and secure: Modern legal teams need solutions that are accessible anywhere, with unlimited data storage and enterprise-grade security.
• Purpose-built for in-house legal: Look for platforms designed for legal teams within organizations – not just for law firms.
• Unified platform: Contract management, matter tracking, reporting and collaboration should live in one place – not stitched together.
• Easy onboarding and migration: Sunsetting timelines are tight. Choose a vendor with proven migration, implementation and onboarding experience.
• Integrations with your existing tools: Your replacement should connect with Outlook, Microsoft 365, document management tools, and e-signature platforms.
• Proven results for legal teams: Check for customer testimonials, case studies, and evidence that the software delivers real value.

Why LawVu is a smart winra replacement

When replacing winra, legal teams shouldn’t have to compromise or settle for another limited, siloed tool. LawVu on the other hand, is a dedicated end-to-end legal workspace, built specifically for in-house teams and designed to go beyond contract management capabilities.

With LawVu’s modern cloud-based platform your legal operations is unified in one secure, intuitive environment – helping your team and the entire business work better together.

Here’s how LawVu delivers on the capabilities legal teams need most:

• Intake and self-service: Improve legal services and boost collaboration with the business by centralizing requests, enabling self-service, access to legal knowledge and enhancing visibility with a legal portal.
• Contract management: Create, collaborate on, and manage contracts throughout their lifecycle. Automate contract workflows, control versions and reduce turnaround times with integrated e-signature and AI capabilities.
• Matter management: Centralize all your legal work and stay on top of tasks, due dates and work in progress with templated workflows, status updates, integrated calendars and reminders for full visibility and control across all matters.
• Document management: Securely store, search and share documents. Organize them by matter or contract and reduce time spent digging through folders or emails.
• Spend management: Track external legal spend, manage budgets, and review invoices in real time. Get transparency across firms and matters to make smarter resourcing decisions.
• Insights and reporting: Access powerful, easy-to-use reporting dashboards that provide data-driven insights into legal performance, workload, risk exposure and value delivered to the business.
• Software integrations: Seamlessly connect with the systems your wider business utilizes as well as other specialized legal tools, centralizing more data and the work you do in one place.
• Embedded AI: The LawVu legal workspace serves practical, secure AI in multiple ways to help streamline workflows and deliver more value to the business. Click here to explore how your team can benefit from embedded AI across your legal work. 

Unlike niche or contract-only tools, LawVu is built to scale with your legal function, whether you’re a small legal team or a complex department with diverse needs.

With proven success globally, and trusted by forward-thinking legal teams, LawVu offers a smarter future-ready alternative to winra.

Learn more about why winra customers should consider LawVu 

Don’t wait until support ends. Be proactive and take control of your legal team’s future today.

Our legal tech specialists are ready to help you evaluate your current workflows and explore how LawVu can replace and enhance your current legal tech stack. See it in action! To request your very own demo of LawVu, click here.