The details that decide the project
Most practice management selections are decided on the big things: the demonstration, the price and the feature list. Most of the problems we see afterwards come from the small things nobody asked about.
The small things rarely appear on a vendor's first slide. They sound like detail, they are easy to leave to "the implementation", and yet each one shapes your security, your costs and how people work for the next ten years.
Partly they get missed because the people choosing the system are often not the people who will run it. Partly because vendors' standard demonstrations, quite reasonably, show what the product does well. And partly because selections run against deadlines, and detail is the first thing a deadline squeezes.
The technical notes
Each note takes one decision that looks small and explains why it is not, with the questions to ask and what to see demonstrated.
Accounts and finance
- Core accounting is still the gold standard
- One-way or two-way sync? Connecting your legal system to Xero
- Units or minutes? How time is recorded
- Your matter and nominal structure
- Making Tax Digital: the firm and its clients
Workflow, data and documents
- Workflow: deep, basic or none?
- Client onboarding and matter inception: portal, e-signature and ID checks working as one
- Custom data: what you rely on, and how you move it
- Precedents, merge codes and macros: your document bank in a new system
Your types of work
- Legal aid: your records, not just the Legal Aid Agency’s
- Litigation: Precedent H starts with time recording
- Family: Form E and financial disclosure
- Private client: where does the tax software fit?
Security and access
- Roles or individuals? How user permissions are set up
- Why manage security twice? Linking application security to Microsoft Entra
- How granular is the security inside the system?
- Who can see what in reporting?
- Shared platform, your data: separation, restore and erasure
- When the supplier is the target: where your data lives, who can reach it, and your real risk
Microsoft 365
- How does it connect to Outlook?
- What did you just give it permission to do?
- What happens behind the scenes? Background integrations with Microsoft 365
- OneDrive is not a document management system
- Microsoft 365 is not a backup
Data and decisions
- Full history or opening balances?
- Can you get your data out?
- Enforced by the system, or by email?
- Who decides, and when?
What good decision-making looks like
It is not about knowing every answer. It is about knowing which questions matter, asking them before you sign, having every answer demonstrated, and getting the people who will live with the answers into the room early.
Where does your firm stand?
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