Running new practice software beside Clio, without migrating

Changing practice software is usually described as a migration: export everything, map it, import it, and cut over on a chosen day. There is a quieter way to adopt a new system. Run it beside the old one, on real work, and let it earn its place.

This post is a practical explainer, not a comparison. Clio is the system many firms already run, so it is the example here, and every statement about Clio comes from Clio’s own help center.

What a parallel run is

In a parallel run, two systems operate at the same time with a clear division of work. The incumbent stays the system of record for everything it already holds. The new system takes a defined slice: a new kind of matter, one practice group, or work that arrives through a new channel. It proves itself on live work before anyone decides anything larger.

Nothing is forced across. The firm’s existing matters, contacts, time and accounts stay where they are, and the new system starts with the work given to it.

Why a parallel run lowers risk

There is no cutover moment. A migration has a hard edge. Clio’s own Data Migration Overview, written for firms moving onto Clio from another system, is candid about it: “Once you export data from your previous system, stop using that system immediately. Any data entered after the export will not be captured in Clio Manage and must be transferred manually.” That is the nature of any export: it is a snapshot, and the firm keeps working after it is taken.

History stays where it is. The same Clio guide lists what a standard migration into Clio cannot carry, including accounting and financial history such as trust account transactions, invoices and historical bills, along with reports, user permissions and settings. Receivable and trust balances come across as single summary lines, each holding the balance at the time of export. A migration moves balances; a parallel run leaves the history in the system that recorded it.

The idea is already familiar. Firms run duplicate systems on purpose where the stakes are highest. Malpractice guidance often describes a dual docket, two calendaring systems kept by two different people, as explained in what legal docketing is. A parallel run applies the same instinct to adoption.

It is reversible. If the new system does not earn its place, stopping costs little, because nothing was taken apart to start it.

What a Clio export contains

Clio’s help article “Export Data From Clio Manage” describes a bulk export for record-keeping or for moving data to a new Clio Manage account. Exported files download as CSV. The article notes that only users with administrator permissions can export data in bulk. Other articles cover documents and single-matter detail.

Two details are worth knowing. First, Clio’s article on filtering and exporting matters says an export from the main Matters tab “will only include the data that you entered in the matter form”; activities and transactions are exported from the matter’s own subtabs. Second, documents are a separate path from the CSV exports: Clio’s documents article describes downloading files and folders, individually or in bulk, and downloading previous versions file by file.

None of this is a criticism. It is what Clio documents, and any firm considering any change deserves to know what its current system hands back, and how.

What to check before relying on any export

Whatever the systems involved, an export is only as useful as what it carries. Before relying on one, a firm may want to answer these questions:

1. Who can run it? In Clio, bulk export is limited to administrators. Knowing who holds that permission avoids a surprise on the day it matters.
2. What does each file cover? A matter export may hold the matter’s fields but not its activity. Knowing which file holds what saves a search later.
3. Do documents come with it? Where documents travel on a separate path, the export plan needs both paths.
4. Do earlier versions come with it? A file is more than its latest draft. Where versions download one at a time, the size of that job is worth knowing in advance.
5. Does the ledger come with it? Balances and history are different things. Knowing which one an export carries matters for trust records most of all.
6. Can it be read without the old software? CSV files and documents in their original formats can be. The links between records, which contact belongs to which matter, need to survive too.
7. Has it ever been tried? A test export in a quiet month shows what the firm actually has, before anyone needs it.

What portable should mean

Portability is not only a vendor feature. When a representation ends, ABA Model Rule 1.16(d) asks the lawyer to surrender the papers and property the client is entitled to, and most jurisdictions read that as the entire file. Which papers that covers is a question for the firm’s lawyers and their own jurisdiction’s rules, explained in more depth in who owns the client file.

Measured against that, a portable file is:

• Complete: everything the client may be entitled to, not only the fields a form happened to capture.
• Whole: documents, their versions, correspondence and the docket, still tied to the matter they belong to.
• Readable: in ordinary formats that open without the vendor’s software.
• Prompt: ready on request, not after a project.

In Marlow, every document version is kept and none is overwritten. The file Marlow holds leaves whole and portable, surrendered on demand. Which papers a given client is entitled to remains a question for the firm’s lawyers and their jurisdiction’s rules.

How Marlow sits beside an incumbent

Marlow is practice software for small law firms: one console for matters, docket, documents and books. It is designed to run beside the system a firm already has. It installs nothing, migrates nothing and binds nothing. The firm keeps Clio for what Clio does.

What Marlow adds sits in its own console:

• Matters that arrive opened. Client demand from consumer services that Marlow’s maker runs arrives at the firm as opened matters, with conflicts screened, the client’s signed consent on file, and every intake step on the record. How much arrives, and when, depends on live demand; nothing here promises a volume.
• A docket that asks for an answer. Reminders come 30, 14 and 7 days out, then daily in the final week, when one named lawyer acknowledges each day. A missed day is journaled as missed, never silent.
• Signing acts for the firm’s own lawyers. Reviews, attestations and reasoned refusals route to the firm’s lawyers, each at a flat fee fixed before anyone takes it and paid whole to the acting lawyer.

Marlow’s own prices are flat and posted before anything is signed, $0 until the filing exists, and never scaled to any fee the firm earns. They are on the pricing page, and how fees work is set out under fees.

Marlow is practice software, not a law firm. It gives no legal advice, and nothing in it can commit past a lawyer’s refusal. For the operating model behind running beside an incumbent, read what a headless law firm is. To see the console on synthetic matters without touching the firm’s current system, join the first firms: five short steps that end in a live sandbox workspace.