Data migration is the process of moving data from your legacy practice management system into your new one.
Transitioning data between systems is a complex process and it's important to understand all practice management systems are different.
Attempting to export your data, transform, and import can be extremely time consuming, and detrimental if handled improperly.
With our services you'll be saving yourself the time and hassle.
This phase involves using advanced proprietary tools and sophisticated software to export your data and files from your current system.
Arguably the most import process, we have developed tools and processes to transform and help cleanse your raw data export into an easily access format that can be imported into your new system.
With our expert knowledge across multiple systems, our team are here to conduct the full import or work alongside either an implementation partner or the system's on-boarding team for a successful data migration.
Hello. Ciao. Bonjour. Nǐ hǎo. Same meaning - different translation.
Although a rudimentary example, migrating data involves a form of translating. Specifically relating to the format of how the data is structured within the system.
This is an important topic to consider because each legal management system have rules required for data importing. For example, in Actionstep, import date formats must be 2024-01-25, rather than 25/01/24. What would take you hours to transform LEAP report data, this will be handled by our data team.
Moving practice management systems provides the opportunity for data housekeeping. To provide you with additional value, our service includes contact data cleansing. Although it may not be detrimental to the operations of your firm, it poses significant issues upon import.
To provide context, some systems only accept numerical values for phone numbers. Others upon import will create each State value as a drop down option in the system. The data we cleanse include:
We have prepared a response to some of the most commonly asked questions.
The systems most experienced in, but limited to, include LEAP, Actionstep, Clio, Smokeball, Open Practice, Worldox, PracticeEvolve, Lawdocs, Silq, LawMaster, Harvest.
The accurate answer will depend on the size of your database, number of matters, number of files, and systems. To provide further insight, the extraction of your raw data (matters/contacts, etc) generally requires 1-day. Using our tools, the cleansing and transformation process now only requires 1.5 days. Once this is complete, your raw data is ready for import. The export of matter files generally requires 1-3 days. The renaming and transformation requires half a day. The import of matter files into your new system is tough to answer and it depends on the system we are importing to. To mitigate not having access to files in your new system, we initiate the import of files for active/open matters first, which is generally completed within 1-2 days.
Upon conducting an initial discovery, we identify the number of different matter types/practice areas used within your current system. From experience, 90% of systems require a matter type association when importing. As all systems are different, it's most likely that either the matter types need to be created in the new system or mapped. If overseen and not handled well before the import date, challenges will arise. Either you will be required to map these last minute, causing headaches, or you may incur additional out of scope fees to build these within the new system.
If your subscription with your current provider is approaching expiry within 3-months, you are already cutting it close and need to get moving. It's important to understand that data migration ideally is only initiated upon approaching the go-live date. Furthermore, our discovery findings may require additional scope to cleanse your data, and provide a possible implementation partner with unaccounted information.
If you operate and manage trust accounting, best practice is to go-live on the first day of the new month. This ensures a clean transition between systems. For this to work, you will need to ensure you still have access to your legacy system for completion of the final trust reconciliation.
If timing is currently an issue and you require data migration services, don't worry - we can still help. The main priority is to ensure we are able to export your data and files before losing access.
In the scenario where we are conducting a full migration, the process for a Feb 1 go-live would follow. On Friday 26th Jan the export would be conducted. On Thursday the 1st Feb, all raw data would have been imported (throughout the week), except for unbilled time entries, unbilled disbursements, outstanding invoices, and trust balances.
Being a tight window with trust accounting, we would expect your firm complete the trust reconciliation for Jan that day. Morning of the 1st Feb, we will initiate a new export of time entries, disbursements, and unpaid invoices. Unbilled and unpaid data will be imported into your new system. Upon providing us with a list of matter trust balances, we will import (if able to), this into your new system. What this means is that the reflected billing data is up to date as of the morning Thursday 1st Feb. Trust Accounting records may resume from Friday 2nd Feb.
A quote does require an initial discovery and is reflected upon the scope of work, size of database, and time frame. The larger the database, the more resources required. To help provide an indication, here are some examples firms leaving LEAP.
A firm with less than 2000 matters, 10,000 contacts, and up to 100,000 matter files:
$4,000 - $5,000
A firm with 5,000 matters, 15,000 contacts, and around 400,000 matter files:
$6,000 - $8,000
A firm with 15,000 matters, 35,000 contacts, and around 1 million files:
$9,000 - $12,500
If we are not required to import any data into your new system, this will mean 1 less step for us and reduced cost for our services. As standard, you will be sent a copy of your data on an SSD hard drive via express post. This will include the raw data extraction files, transformed files in Excel, and documents/files cleanly structured and named. In addition, we will prepare direct import files for the raw data being entered into your new system as per their instructions outlined on their website.
This is one area we specifically cover in more detail during discovery, but hopefully this response will initially help. This answer needs to be broken into three parts, however, it's important that you understand although some data may not be imported, we still provide you with the data, accessible via csv on the hard drive. The first involves the import capabilities of your new provider. In short - if we are able to import it, we will import it. The second involves historical data. We found the best approach is to not migrate historical accounting records for accuracy purposes, excluding outstanding invoices, unbilled time entries and disbursements, and trust matter balances. The third involves configuration to be added into the system, an example being custom fields. While the system may be capable of importing this data, the custom fields would need to be initially created. As this falls under implementation and system configuration, it's not included within our data migration services.
Typically for us, we recommend Friday 5pm, the week prior to your go-live date. This allows us to initiate the extraction process over the weekend and commence the transformation and cleansing phase on the Monday. From the date of export, anything entered into your current system will not be included within the data migration.
Provided that you still have access to your current system, during this brief period, we recommend that your team note what matters and files have been modified as you will need to re-enter this data in your new system.
It's useful to know that leading up to the export date, we will have already conducted an initial export of your raw data to identify matter type mapping requirements. This mitigates any risk of interruption once begun.
In relation to the import of Billing and Trust Accounting, this will be a case-by-case basis depending upon the system and go-live date. Between the period of export and go-live, it's important that you enter all Trust Accounting entries in your old system and do not record any data in the new system until the trust account balances have been imported.