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Migration · PCLaw to Clio
Every migration on this page involves money. This one involves money that is not yours. Client trust funds are regulated by your state bar, subject to three-way reconciliation, and a discrepancy is not an accounting error to be tidied up later — it is a reportable event.
That single fact reshapes the whole engagement. Trust gets extracted first, reconciled independently, and signed off separately from everything else, and cutover does not proceed until the trust ledger ties to the penny at both the firm level and the individual matter level.
PCLaw holds billing, accounting, and trust in one place, and it is the accounting side that makes this pair harder than a practice-management-only move. Extraction reaches the client ledgers, trust ledgers, time and disbursement records, and billing history. Clio's billing and trust capabilities are the destination, but the two systems model a firm's books differently enough that this is a reconstruction with verification, not a transfer — which is precisely why it is priced as Complex.
Each of these gets its own record count in the assessment and its own line in the reconciliation report. Depth of history is a scope decision made with real numbers in front of you, not an assumption baked into a quote.
Trust ledgers, by matter and by bank account
Individual client trust balances and the bank-account-level totals they roll up to. Extracted first, reconciled independently, signed off before anything else in the engagement proceeds.
Client and matter balances
Accounts receivable by client and by matter, reconciled against a PCLaw-side aging report.
Time entries and disbursements
Recorded time with rates and timekeepers, plus hard and soft disbursements, to an agreed history depth.
Work in progress
Unbilled time and unbilled disbursements — the thing most likely to be quietly dropped in a DIY migration, and the thing that directly reduces what the firm can bill next month.
Billing history
Issued invoices with their dates, amounts, and payment application, so the payment history against each matter still reconciles.
Retainers and evergreen balances
Held retainers, replenishment thresholds, and the evergreen arrangements that determine when a client gets asked for more money.
Clients, matters, and rates
The client and matter records the financial data hangs off, plus rate structures including matter-specific and client-specific rates.
Written down before you spend anything, because the alternative is finding out in week six. This list is specific to PCLaw to Clio; the assessment turns it into your list, with record counts attached.
— PCLaw's general ledger as like-for-like history. The firm's GL is a full accounting system, and Clio is not a general ledger. In practice balances carry forward, PCLaw is retained read-only for prior-period reporting, and your accountant plans a clean period break — usually at a fiscal year end. Any vendor telling you the GL comes across whole has not closed a year on the far side of one.
— Historical invoices as regenerable documents. Issued invoices migrate as records with their amounts and payment application. Reproducing a 2019 invoice exactly as it was rendered means keeping PCLaw read-only, which you should be doing anyway.
— Bank reconciliation history. Cleared and uncleared status at a point in time is accounting-system state; you reconcile forward from a clean cutover date rather than carrying the history.
— Custom PCLaw reports and the firm-specific financial reporting pack. Rebuilt against Clio's reporting layer as separate work — for a firm of any size, plan for this as a real project.
— Payroll, if you run it through PCLaw. It is out of scope for a practice-management destination and needs its own home.
— PCLaw internal record IDs. Clio issues its own; anything keyed externally needs the mapping table.
None of this is in either vendor's documentation. It is the category of thing that looks fine in a test load and produces a wrong number in month two, which is why the process puts a full sandbox load and a reconciliation you sign in front of any production cutover.
01
Bank statement, trust ledger, and client ledger must all agree — before cutover, not after. This is the single named gate on the engagement: if the three-way does not tie, cutover does not happen, regardless of what the schedule says. Your bookkeeper and, ideally, your accountant sign this alongside you.
02
Migrating mid-period splits the firm's books across two systems in a way that makes the year genuinely painful to close. A fiscal period end — ideally a year end — costs nothing extra to wait for and saves your accountant a great deal. This is planned around your accounting calendar, not around a convenient weekend.
03
Unbilled time and disbursements sitting in PCLaw at cutover represent next month's revenue. They are also the least visible object in the migration, because nothing looks obviously wrong when they are missing. WIP gets its own reconciliation line and its own sign-off.
04
Not as part of a general financial extraction. Separately, first, reconciled on its own, and signed off on its own — so that if anything else in the engagement goes sideways, the regulated ledger is already verified and safe.
01 — 02
A read-only audit of your PCLaw instance produces record counts, a risk register, and a fixed quote. Then a field-by-field mapping document you sign before any code runs.
03 — 04
The complete migration runs into a Clio sandbox — not a sample. You spot-check records you choose, and sign a written reconciliation. If the counts don't tie, we don't cut over.
05 — 06
Scheduled around your calendar with the rollback plan written in advance, followed by 30 days of included corrections for the things that only surface in real use.
Effectively always Complex. Trust reconciliation, a period-boundary cutover, and rebuilding the financial reporting pack are all standard rather than exceptional on this pair. The assessment is what makes a fixed migration price possible, and its fee is credited toward the migration if you proceed.
Tier
Scope
Price
Migration Assessment
A read-only audit of your source system.
$1,500 – $2,500
Standard Migration
One source system to one destination.
$6,500 – $15,000
Complex / Multi-Entity Migration
Multiple locations, systems, or long history.
$18,000 – $40,000
Only if it is treated as ordinary financial data, which is exactly what a generic migration does. Handled properly it is the safest object in the engagement, because it is extracted first, reconciled independently, and gated — cutover cannot proceed without a signed three-way reconciliation. The risk comes from migrations that treat the trust ledger as one more balance to carry.
Sit in the mapping review for the financial objects, agree the cutover period boundary, and sign the reconciliation alongside you. It is a few hours of their time and it is the difference between a clean year-end and a painful one. Involve them at the start rather than presenting them with a completed migration.
Read-only, yes, and you should — it is your prior-period archive and the thing that makes the migration reversible. Running it live in parallel for new work is a different proposition and usually a bad idea, because the books diverge immediately.
Because the cost driver is the trust reconciliation and the period-boundary planning, not the record count. A four-attorney firm and a forty-attorney firm both need the three-way to tie. If the assessment shows your books are unusually clean and the scope is narrow, that shows up in the quote — the tier is a starting expectation, not a floor I refuse to go below.
The assessment is the read-only audit — what data exists, what is extractable, what will be lost, and a fixed-price quote for the migration itself. It is priced at $1,500 – $2,500 depending on scope, fixed before anything starts, and the report is yours whether or not you go further.
Tell me what you're moving. I read every one of these personally and reply within one business day, usually with a couple of specific questions about your source system — the answers change the price, so it's worth asking early.
Nothing is committed by this form. No payment, no contract, no scheduling sequence. It starts a conversation.
If your destination vendor can handle it, I'll say so. Some conversions genuinely don't need an independent migration.
Standard – Complex
Fifteen years of custom fields.
Standard – Complex
Access is the constraint, not effort.
Standard
Trust balances, even on an easy pair.
Every pair
Twenty-odd pairs are written up across seven industries — and the written ones are not the limit of the work. Search the full list, or just ask.
PCLaw and Clio are trademarks of their respective owners. This page describes independent data migration work involving those systems and does not imply any affiliation with, partnership with, or endorsement by either vendor.
Before you give notice on PCLaw
The most expensive mistake in this category is losing source-system access before the extraction is done. The assessment is read-only, fixed-price, and yours to keep either way.
I respond personally within 1 business day. No pitch — just a real conversation.