How Co-op's probate team increased adpoting by moving from email communications to a dedicated portal.
Co-op Legal Services runs one of the largest probate operations in the country. Sarah's team is one of the largest within the organisation and CLS is the largest overall provider nationally, providing probate services for bereaved families during one of the most sensitive and document-heavy processes a client will ever go through.
"We are a volume national legal services provider. I work in our Probate Operations department which is our largest in the organisation and largest overall nationally. My role is to oversee a number of teams that provide probate services for bereaved families."
Before implementing Legado, the team relied heavily on email to exchange documents with clients, a process that sat outside their core case management system, Proclaim.
"We found an overreliance on emails and had issues with sending and receiving documents outside of our case management system."
The push to change course came in part from customers themselves, who were already telling Co-op what they expected good service to look like.
"Providing a customer portal was something which had been raised in customer reviews as something that would be beneficial and expected."
Co-op now runs a dedicated client portal, integrated with Proclaim, covering a four-stage probate journey from initial document collection through to final distribution. Personal representatives and beneficiaries register, upload, review, and sign documents directly in the portal, including e-signature support, while case handlers manage everything through Proclaim on their end.
Adoption of the platform has translated into a shift in how the team works with clients.
"The team use this day-to-day, and it means customers are taken to a dedicated portal rather than relying on email for document exchange and completion."
Sarah also singled out the Legado team's support as a standout part of the experience as usage has scaled.
"The support from the Legado team has been really useful and beneficial as we try and increase usage across our cases."
Since implementing Legado, Sarah has seen a clear change in how documents move through the team and how customers experience the process.
That shift shows up clearly in the numbers too: the number of active users on the Co-op portal has more than doubled over the past year, growing steadily as adoption has spread across the team, and a strong, consistent flow of new probate cases now joins the portal every month.
Here's how she describes the results:
"Reduced emails and items going straight into our case management system is really important. Email is quick but the document approval and signing on Legado is good. Customers now don't mention we don't have a portal, which is pleasing."
When asked about the single biggest benefit, Sarah shared that it was the availability of a portal for customers.
With active users more than doubling and new cases joining the portal every month, adoption continues to build across Co-op's national probate caseload.
For a team handling document-heavy work at this scale, that growth has meant fewer manual handoffs, a cleaner record for each case, and a smoother experience for families navigating an already difficult process.
Sarah's advice to other organisations considering Legado is straightforward.
"If you want a ready-made solution that enables document exchange, then Legado is definitely worth considering.”