The question that ends the demo
Your product is a modern case management system for a particular type of practice. The firm likes it. Then the practice manager asks how you will move their matters. They have been on the same system for many years. It holds open matters with workflows at different stages, key dates, client and third-party contacts, historical ledgers, and documents stored in folders linked by matter number. The previous supplier's export is a set of files that nobody at the firm fully understands.
You say you have done migrations before. The practice manager asks to see how you check that nothing is lost, especially key dates. You have no clear answer, and the firm decides to wait another year.
Why case management data is hard to move
Legacy case management systems in law firms were often customised heavily, with workflows and fields added over years for particular matter types.
- Workflows are encoded in the old system's own logic, so a matter's stage is not a simple field.
- Key dates, such as limitation dates or court deadlines, may be held in diaries, tasks or custom fields.
- Contacts are duplicated across matters, with third parties such as other side solicitors held inconsistently.
- Ledger and billing history must match the firm's accounts exactly.
- Documents are linked by paths and matter numbers that may not survive the move.
- The firm cannot stop work during migration, so data keeps changing.
What a risky migration costs
Law firms are right to be cautious. A missed key date after migration is a serious matter for the firm and its client. That caution means firms with the most history, often the most valuable to win, are the hardest to move. When migrations are done without proper checks, errors surface months later on live matters, and your product gets the blame. Your team spends weeks on corrections that should have been caught before go-live.
Migration work also eats developer time. Each firm becomes a bespoke project, and nothing learned carries over to the next.
How we build a migration firms can sign off
What we build is a repeatable migration process with checks the firm's own people can verify.
- Extraction from the old system's database or exports, including documents and their links to matters, with the firm's permission and access.
- A mapping document per source system, recording what each field, status and workflow stage means and where it lands in your product, reused and improved with each firm.
- Workflow stage mapping, so each open matter arrives at the equivalent point in your product's workflow, with anything uncertain flagged.
- Key date extraction from every place the old system stores them, compared side by side with what arrives in your product, for the firm to check.
- Reconciliation reports: matter counts by type and status, contact counts, ledger totals by matter, and document counts, each compared with the source.
- A delta migration close to cutover and a period where the old system stays readable, so questions can be answered from the original.
| Check | Compared | Signed off by |
|---|---|---|
| Open matters by type | Source and target counts | Practice manager |
| Key dates | Every date, side by side | Supervising fee earners |
| Ledger balances | Per matter totals | Firm's accounts team |
| Documents | Counts and sample opens | Practice manager sample check |
| Workflow stage | Sample of matters per type | Fee earners for that work type |
Whether the firm's professional and accounting obligations are met is for the firm and its advisers. We make every difference visible so they can decide with the facts.
The practice manager's question, answered
In the sales process you show a sample key date reconciliation from test data and explain who checks what. During the migration, the firm's supervising fee earners receive their matters' key dates side by side with the old system, and flag two that were held in a custom field the mapping missed. The mapping is fixed for this firm and every firm after. The practice manager signs off the reconciliation, and the old system stays readable for as long as the firm wants.
Is migration costing you firms?
- Prospects on legacy systems stall after asking about migration.
- Each migration is a new script written from scratch.
- You cannot show a firm a key date reconciliation before go-live.
- Errors from migrations surface on live matters months later.
- There is no record of how old system fields were interpreted.