PC Legal Technology
INSIGHTS

Independent views on legal technology.

Practical thinking for law firms on getting value from technology, choosing well, and keeping control when the market moves.

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Thinking of changing system?Before you move, know what you haveMost firms use a fraction of their system. Find out what you have first.AI and your dataAI is an enabler. Why handcuff it? Keep control of how AI reaches your dataKeep control of which AI sees your clients’ data, and how.Risk, compliance and securityEarly warning: risk management, file reviews and a risk portal for your COLP and COFARisk management, file reviews and a risk portal for compliance officers.

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Technical notes: small decisions, big consequences

A short series on the technical details that look minor in a system decision but shape security, cost and how people work for years. Start with the overview: The details that decide the project

Accounts and finance (5)
Core accounting is still the gold standardAI and workflow get the attention in demonstrations. In our experience, most change requests after go-live are about accounting. Why it should lead every selection.One-way or two-way sync? Connecting your legal system to XeroRunning office accounts in Xero alongside a legal system works well, if the integration is designed on purpose. The choices that decide whether it reconciles.Units or minutes? How time is recordedSix-minute units, actual minutes and rounding rules look like a setting. They shape billing, client trust and every productivity report you will ever run.Your matter and nominal structureMatter types, departments, cost centres and nominal codes are set up once and reported on for years. Getting them right is a design decision, not data entry.Making Tax Digital: the firm and its clientsMaking Tax Digital affects the firm’s own VAT returns, and for private client teams, increasingly their clients’ income tax. Where the legal system fits in.
Workflow, data and documents (4)
Workflow: deep, basic or none?Some systems have powerful workflow engines; others offer little more than matter opening templates and task lists. Why that difference decides a selection, especially if you are leaving a heavily workflowed system.Client onboarding and matter inception: portal, e-signature and ID checks working as oneOnboarding is a client’s first experience of the firm and the point where most conflict and AML risk is controlled. How a portal, electronic signatures and an API-connected ID provider can work together.Custom data: what you rely on, and how you move itCustom data screens drive workflows, precedents and reports. Why they matter in selection, and why migrating them between systems is often the biggest hidden job in the project.Precedents, merge codes and macros: your document bank in a new systemEvery precedent depends on merge codes, and many on macros. What happens to your document bank when you change system, and why VBA may not come with you.
Your types of work (4)
Legal aid: your records, not just the Legal Aid Agency’sLegal aid work depends on the Legal Aid Agency’s systems, fee schemes and contract rules. What a practice management system has to do, and what 2025 taught firms about relying on someone else’s system.Litigation: Precedent H starts with time recordingCosts budgets, budget monitoring and the electronic bill of costs all use phases, tasks and activities. If time is not recorded that way from the start, every one becomes a manual job.Family: Form E and financial disclosureForm E draws together a client’s whole financial position. Whether the system captures that data once, and produces Form E and the schedules from it, is a custom data and precedent decision.Private client: where does the tax software fit?Trust and personal tax returns for wealthy clients are usually prepared in specialist tax software, not the legal system. How the two should work together, and the deadlines that depend on it.
Security and access (6)
Roles or individuals? How user permissions are set upPermissions set by role are consistent and auditable. Permissions set function by function for each person drift. Why the model matters more than the settings.Why manage security twice? Linking application security to Microsoft EntraFirms secure their estate in Microsoft Entra, then set up users and roles again in every application. How much of that can be driven from one place.How granular is the security inside the system?Module, function, matter, document and field: the levels at which a system can control access, and why ethical walls are only as good as the weakest of them.Who can see what in reporting?Reports gather information from everywhere, so they can quietly bypass the controls set elsewhere. Deciding reporting visibility on purpose.Shared platform, your data: separation, restore and erasureMost software as a service runs many firms on one platform. How your data is kept apart, whether it can be restored on its own, and whether it can really be erased, including from backups.When the supplier is the target: where your data lives, who can reach it, and your real riskAttackers increasingly target suppliers, because one breach reaches many customers. Where your practice management data is held, who can access it, and how exposed your firm really is.
Microsoft 365 (5)
How does it connect to Outlook?"Does it integrate with Outlook?" is the wrong question. Why how it connects matters for the next ten years.What did you just give it permission to do?What a legal system can access in Microsoft 365, and the settings that keep your client data protected.What happens behind the scenes? Background integrations with Microsoft 365Automatic email filing and calendar sync run in the background. How they are built decides reliability, security and what you have to watch.OneDrive is not a document management systemPersonal storage, sharing links, sync to home computers and what happens when people leave: why where documents are saved matters.Microsoft 365 is not a backupRetention, version history and recycle bins are not the same as being able to restore everything to a point in time. Who is responsible for what.
Data and decisions (4)
Full history or opening balances?Why full ledger migrations struggle, what you really need to see on historic bills, and why opening balances with a read-only archive or data warehouse often work better.Can you get your data out?Exit rights, exports and the tactics some vendors use to make leaving hard: "it’s not your data", exports of 100 documents at a time, missing history. How to protect yourself before you sign.Enforced by the system, or by email?Write-offs, client account payments, reconciliation sign-off and key dates: controls that only work if the system enforces them.Who decides, and when?Small decisions become problems when they are made by accident. A simple decision-making process for a system change.