Which case management software offers free migration, and what "free" covers
Migration is quoted as free by most vendors and means something different at each one. These are the questions that tell you what you are actually getting before you sign.
Most legal software vendors will tell you migration is free. The word covers everything from a specialist who moves your entire history and verifies it against your last reconciliation, to a CSV template you fill in yourself with a help article for company.
Both are accurately described as free. Only one of them saves you the three weeks. These are the questions that tell you which one you are being offered, and they are worth asking before the demo ends rather than after the contract starts.
Nine questions to ask any vendor.
Free at what size?
Free migration often has a ceiling: a number of users, matters, or gigabytes, above which it becomes a quoted project. Ask where the line is and whether your firm is under it today and in a year.
Does it include documents?
Records are rows in a database and cheap to move. Documents are the bulk of the work and the bulk of the storage. A migration that covers matters but leaves you to drag folders across is most of the job left undone.
Trust history, or just balances?
The single most important question on this list. An opening balance per client with no transactions behind it leaves the history in the system you are cancelling, and you are required to be able to produce it for years.
Are custom fields mapped?
The fields you added to fit your practice are what a standard importer drops. Ask whether mapping them is included or billable, and get the answer about your fields rather than about fields in general.
How far back does financial history go?
Invoices, payments, and time entries have a habit of arriving for the last twelve months only. If you need three years of billing history for a fee dispute or a partner buyout, find out now.
Who actually does the work?
A named specialist who runs it with you, or a self-serve importer and a support queue. Both get called free migration. Ask how many hours of your staff's time the vendor expects it to take.
Is there a verification step?
You want a comparison you can check: client balances against your last reconciliation, matter counts, document counts. If verification is not part of the offer, the migration is not finished when they say it is.
How many passes do you get?
First attempts have problems. Ask whether re-running the import after you find an issue is included, or whether the free migration was a single shot and the fix is a project.
What does it cost to leave?
The question almost nobody asks at signing. Free to get in and expensive to get out is a real pricing model. Ask what a full export looks like, including documents, and whether it costs anything.
Our answers to our own nine questions.
Migration into CaseFuze is run by a specialist, not a template. Matters, contacts, documents, and trust ledgers move with their history. Custom fields are mapped to fields we create for them. Balances are verified client by client against the reconciliation you print on your cutoff date, and nothing goes live until that comparison is clean. There is no size threshold and no charge at any firm size.
- Transactions, not opening balances. Trust history arrives intact so your retention obligation does not depend on your old vendor's goodwill.
- Keep the old system running. Nothing is switched off until you have closed a full cycle here.
- Free to leave as well. Your data exports whole, documents included, at no charge, whenever you want it.
Bring six years of files. Pay nothing to move them.
A specialist moves your matters, contacts, documents, and trust ledgers with their full history, verifies every client balance against your own reconciliation, and leaves your old system running until you are ready. No migration fee, no size limit, no charge to export it all back out again.
Common questions about free migration.
Why would a vendor migrate my data for free?
Is free migration lower quality than paid?
What do we have to do ourselves?
Can we migrate from more than one system?
Keep reading.
The software that does this for you.
CaseFuze handles the ledger, the statement, and the checks. $49 per user per month.