Who decides, and when?
Outlook connections, permissions, exit rights, controls: none of them is a big decision on its own. The problem is when they are made by accident, by a vendor’s defaults, by whoever was available to click "Accept", or by nobody at all.
A simple decision-making process
- Write down what you need before you look at products. Business drivers first, features second: how your firm works, how it wants to work, and what the system must do to support that. We can help you create your specification, and our free requirements builder is a good place to start.
- Bring the right people in early: IT and security, your COFA for the accounts, your COLP for risk, and fee earners for how work really happens.
- Ask every vendor the same questions, including the awkward ones, and get the answers in writing.
- Keep a decision log: what was decided, by whom, why, and what was traded away.
- Have everything demonstrated. Every requirement in your specification should be shown working, against your own scenarios and data, not described in a presentation or promised on a roadmap. If you cannot see it, it does not exist.
- Test the small things in the demonstration, not just the headline features: the new Outlook, a Mac, a new starter on a fresh laptop, a data export, an approval the system should refuse.
- Agree the protections before the price: data return, price caps, notice before any product is withdrawn, and no forced migration.
The role of independent advice
None of this needs a large consultancy. It needs someone asking the right questions at the right time, with no reason to steer you towards a particular answer. We have no ties to any vendor, so our only interest is the decision being right for your firm.
Technical notes: small decisions, big consequences
Start with the overview: The details that decide the project
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? (you are here)
Where does your firm stand?
Our free practice management review shows how much of your current system you really use and, if you are thinking of moving, builds an independent requirements specification that takes your reasons into account. Nothing is sent to us.
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