Leaving Proclaim? What to do with your case archive.

A firm that has run Proclaim for ten or twenty years holds far more closed matters than open ones. The new system is chosen for the live work. But the closed files still get asked about: a complaint, a claim against the firm, a returning client, a subject access request, an auditor. Someone has to be able to open the file, read the history and find the letter that was sent.

The four options

1. Keep Proclaim running, just for look-ups

The default, and usually the most expensive over time. You keep paying licences and keep a server patched and backed up. You also need someone who still remembers how to find things in a system nobody uses day to day. The cost never ends, because the retention period never quite does.

2. Migrate everything into the new system

It sounds tidy. In practice closed matters are the hardest data to map: old case types, retired workflows and years of history in formats the new system does not share. Many vendors only take core fields and open matters. The ones that take everything fill a clean new system with thousands of dead files.

3. Export to files on a shared drive

Cheap, and fine for the odd document. But a folder of PDFs is not a case file. You lose the history in order, the link between an email and the matter it belongs to, the accounts, and any control over who can see what.

4. Move the history into a standalone archive

Export once from Proclaim and import into a system built only for reading closed files: searchable, in a browser, with no Proclaim licence. Live matters go to the new system, closed matters go to the archive, and Proclaim can be switched off. This is what we built CaseViewer to do, for a firm with about twenty-five years of Proclaim data.

What a good archive has to do

• Find a case without the reference. By client name, case type, fee earner or date, and across history, email subjects and document names.
• Show the whole file, in order. Emails, letters, memos, calls and file notes as a timeline, not a pile of attachments.
• Open documents in the browser. PDFs, Word, Excel, images and emails, with no extra software to install.
• Keep the accounts. Finance will be asked about old bills long after the matter closed.
• Control and record access. Named users, permissions you can revoke, and an audit of every sign-in.
• Let you delete on schedule. An archive that can only grow will one day hold data you should no longer keep.

The order to do it in

• Draw the line early. Decide which matters move to the new system and which go to the archive. Open versus closed is the usual line, with a rule for matters that close during the move.
• Run a trial export before you sign anything. A real export shows what state the data is in. Plans made without one tend to slip.
• Check the counts. Cases, documents and history entries in Proclaim against what arrived in the archive, with every failure listed rather than skipped.
• Overlap, then switch off. Keep Proclaim available for a short agreed period while people use the archive for real, then retire it once someone has signed it off.

Questions to ask any archive provider

• Can we see our own data in it before we commit, not a demo firm?
• Where are the documents stored, and is our data kept separate from other firms' data?
• What happens to a case that fails to import? Do we get told which ones, and why?
• Can the accounts be imported again without creating duplicates?
• How do we get everything back out if we ever leave you?

Do we have to keep paying for Proclaim to look up old cases?

No. Once the history has been exported and imported into an archive, it can be searched and read in a browser with no Proclaim licence, server or installation.

How long do we need to keep closed files?

That is set by your own retention policy, your regulator and your insurer, and it varies by matter type. An archive should hold files for as long as the policy says, and let you delete them once the period ends.

Can the live data move at the same time?

Yes. Live matters can be migrated to the new case management system while closed matters go to the archive, so the switch happens once.