City Legal Solicitors, a large immigration firm, had outgrown its Insight Legal system — but a firm's biggest barrier to a better platform is the fear of moving to it. Here's how City Legal migrated every client record, case file and financial entry to SpineLegal, and went live fast.
The riskiest system is often the one you're afraid to leave.
Client records, active and archived case files, and financial data — all moved intact, with no loss or corruption
Understand, tailor, migrate, transition — a managed journey from consultation to go-live
An expedited timeline without compromising quality — tested, trained, and supported in real time
City Legal Solicitors is a large immigration law firm based in Harrow, London, handling substantial caseloads under some of the most deadline- and documentation-intensive regulations in legal practice. For years, the firm ran on Insight Legal for case and practice management.
Growth changed the equation. The firm needed workflows tailored to its own processes, integrations with the tools it already depended on, and a platform that would scale with its caseload — none of which its existing system could deliver. What stood between City Legal and a better platform wasn't doubt about the destination. It was the journey: years of client records, live cases and financial history that had to arrive intact.
The existing system's constraints were clear. What kept the firm on it anyway was the risk every firm weighs before switching: what if the move itself goes wrong?
Insight Legal offered limited flexibility in tailoring workflows and features to match the firm's unique processes.
The system lacked seamless integration with the other essential tools and platforms the firm used every day.
As the firm grew, the platform struggled to accommodate the increasing volume of cases and client data.
Client records, live matters, archived files, billing history, trust accounts — a migration that goes wrong doesn't inconvenience a firm; it wounds it.
Staying meant running a growing practice on a system that couldn't keep up. Leaving meant trusting someone with everything the firm had ever recorded. The answer had to remove the second risk — completely.
SpineLegal began with in-depth consultation on City Legal's operational workflows, case types, billing structures, compliance obligations and integration needs — the foundation for tailoring the new system to the firm, not the other way round.
The platform was configured to align precisely with City Legal's processes:
SpineLegal managed the entire migration — comprehensive client profiles and contacts, active and archived case files with notes, documents and correspondence, and financial data including billing records, invoices and trust account details. Executed with meticulous attention to data integrity: no loss, no corruption.
An expedited timeline without compromised quality: comprehensive post-migration testing to validate functionality and data accuracy, training sessions to bring the team up to speed, and real-time support through go-live to address concerns as they arose.
Automated workflows and document generation reduced administrative burdens, letting solicitors focus on client advocacy.
Connections to the firm's other tools streamlined operations and improved data consistency across platforms.
The new system accommodated the firm's growth, efficiently managing an increasing volume of cases and client data.
Customisable features ensured adherence to immigration regulations and the firm's own internal policies.
"A rapid, seamless migration — and a growing firm now running on a platform tailored to how it actually works, with nothing left behind."
The outcome for City Legal Solicitors
Since this migration, SpineLegal has become an AI-native platform — and the same care that moved City Legal's data now governs everything the AI does with it: grounded in the firm's own matters, and nothing released without a human decision.
Every migrated matter carries an AI assistant grounded in that matter's own file — including the history that came across in the migration. Years of correspondence and documents become instantly searchable and summarisable, not just stored.
The tailored workflows a migration establishes can now include AI steps — generating documents, preparing bundles, chasing outstanding items — each reviewed by a fee earner before anything is released, sent or filed.
Client data is never used to train AI models. Documents live in the firm's own Microsoft environment with enterprise SharePoint storage, full version history and strict tenant isolation — and every AI output is attributable and reviewable.
A firm that trusts SpineLegal to move its data can trust the same discipline in how AI touches it.
Whether you're on Insight Legal, Clio, LEAP or spreadsheets held together by habit, the migration is ours to manage — planned with you, tested before go-live, and supported in real time on the day. Nothing lost, nobody left behind.
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