Custom data: what you rely on, and how you move it

What custom data does for you

• Precedents: letters and documents drafted from the data, without retyping.
• Workflow: decisions and automatic steps driven by the answers.
• Reporting: management information by property type, claim value, referrer or anything else the firm captures.
• Consistency: the same information captured the same way on every matter, which also makes AI and search far more useful.

Some systems can barely hold it

Some systems offer only a handful of extra fields per matter. Others support full screens, with dates, money, choices, links to contacts, validation and repeating groups (several properties, beneficiaries or children on one matter). Check whether custom data can be used everywhere: in workflows, precedents, searches, reports and the API. Data that can be captured but not used is just more typing.

Why migrating it is so hard

• Nothing lines up. Field types, repeating groups, lists of choices and codes rarely match between systems.
• Years of drift. The same information held in different fields on different matter types, free text where there should be a choice, fields nobody uses any more.
• Everything depends on it. If a field arrives in the wrong place, every workflow, precedent and report that relies on it breaks, often silently.
• Matters in progress. A live matter half way through a workflow needs its data, and its place in the process, to arrive intact.

Start from where you want to be

1. Inventory: list every custom screen and field, how many matters use it, and what depends on it.
2. Design the destination first: decide the data the new system needs for each type of work, then map the old data into it, rather than recreating the old screens.
3. Retire and clean: drop what nobody uses, and fix inconsistencies before you move, not after.
4. Prove it: run a trial migration and check sample matters field by field, then generate precedents and run workflows on them.

What to ask, and what to see

1. Create a custom screen with a repeating group, then use it in a document, a report and through the API.
2. How do you migrate custom data from our current system, and who maps it?
3. Show our own sample matters after a trial migration, with the custom data in the right place.
4. How are live matters brought across part way through a process?