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Migration · Time Matters to Clio
Time Matters is one of the most heavily customized systems in this whole category. Firms that have run it for a decade have built custom fields, custom forms, and record relationships that encode how the firm actually works — and none of that exists in any documentation.
That customization is the migration. Extracting the records is comparatively routine. Working out what your firm meant by a field somebody added in 2011 is the part that requires a person who knows the practice sitting in the mapping review.
Time Matters runs on SQL Server, so with appropriate access the tables can be read directly rather than scraped through reports — which means the assessment can produce hard record counts early. Clio is cloud-hosted with a documented API and a defined intake. The complication is not access, it is meaning: Time Matters lets a firm add fields and record types freely, so two firms on the same version can have materially different schemas. The assessment inventories yours specifically.
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.
Contacts and related parties
Clients, opposing parties, counsel, courts, experts, and the relationship web between them that determines conflict checking.
Matters and matter history
Matter records with practice area, responsible attorney, open and close dates, status, and matter numbering — including the numbering convention your firm actually uses rather than the one the system defaults to.
Notes and matter history entries
The chronological record against each matter, with dates and authors preserved. In a firm this is the contemporaneous record, and it gets validated as its own step.
Calendar and deadlines
Appointments, court dates, and — critically — calculated deadline chains, which need review rather than a blind copy.
Time entries and billing history
Recorded time, rates, and billing history to an agreed depth, plus unbilled work in progress.
Documents and document links
Document associations remapped to the right matter. Note that Time Matters generally stores pointers to files on a share rather than the files themselves — see the quirks section, because this decides the shape of the whole document workstream.
Custom fields
Your firm-specific fields mapped into Clio custom fields where a home exists, and flagged explicitly where one does not, so nothing disappears silently.
Written down before you spend anything, because the alternative is finding out in week six. This list is specific to Time Matters to Clio; the assessment turns it into your list, with record counts attached.
— Time Matters' custom forms, screen layouts, and record-type configuration. The data in them migrates where a destination home exists; the interface that collected it is rebuilt, and that is separately scoped.
— Automated workflows, triggers, and document-assembly templates. Rebuilt on the Clio side.
— Calculated deadline rules. The resulting dates migrate as dates; the rules that computed them do not, and they need re-establishing in Clio's court-rules capability. Treat every migrated deadline as requiring review, not as verified.
— Documents themselves, where Time Matters only ever held a link to a network share. The links migrate as associations, but if the share is being restructured or retired as part of the move, that is a distinct file-migration workstream identified in the assessment.
— Full accounting detail if your Time Matters is paired with PCLaw. Billing and trust live on that side, and moving them is its own engagement — see the PCLaw page.
— Time Matters internal record IDs. Clio issues its own; anything keyed externally needs the mapping table I produce and hand to you.
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
This surprises firms more than anything else on this pair. If the network share is being retired, decommissioned, or reorganized as part of going cloud, then migrating the links accomplishes nothing — the files have to move too, and their folder structure has to be reconciled against matters. Establishing whether that is in scope is one of the first things the assessment settles.
02
A field labelled "Status 2" means something specific to the person who created it, and that person may have retired. Mapping requires someone from the firm who knows the history, in the room, during the review. There is no way to infer it from the data, and guessing is how information is quietly lost.
03
Your matter numbers appear on filings, correspondence, and bills going back years. Whether they carry unchanged into Clio is a decision with external consequences, and it has to be made deliberately rather than accepted as whatever the import produces.
04
A date that migrated correctly and a date that is still correct are different claims. Rules change, and the rule engine does not migrate. Every calendared deadline should be treated as requiring attorney review after cutover — that expectation goes in the plan explicitly, because assuming otherwise is a malpractice exposure rather than a data one.
01 — 02
A read-only audit of your Time Matters 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.
A small firm with light customization lands in Standard Migration. Firms with heavy custom-field use, a document share that has to move too, or a paired PCLaw engagement land in Complex. 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
That depends on whether the share is staying. If it is, the links can be remapped and the files stay where they are. If you are going fully cloud, the files themselves have to move and be reconciled against matters, which is a distinct workstream with its own cost. The assessment settles which situation you are in before anything is quoted.
Where a home exists in Clio, yes. Where one does not, they are flagged explicitly in the mapping document rather than dropped quietly — you decide what to do with each one. The honest constraint is that a destination with a fixed schema cannot absorb unlimited firm-specific structure, and pretending otherwise is how firms discover gaps in month three.
Dates migrate. The rules that calculated them do not, and Clio's court-rules capability has to be set up separately. I write into the plan that every calendared deadline requires attorney review after cutover, because treating a migrated date as verified is a professional-responsibility risk rather than a technical one.
Yes, before anything is shared. Client files are privileged material, work happens in a scoped environment, and test data is destroyed at the end of the engagement on a documented schedule.
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.
Complex
Trust accounting must reconcile exactly.
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.
Time Matters 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 Time Matters
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.