PracticePanther to Filevine
Firms usually move from PracticePanther to Filevine when volume, not billing, has become the constraint on growth. We design the Filevine project types and sections first, then migrate your matters, contacts and documents into a structure your team can actually work in.
This move is almost always about workflow. PracticePanther tells you what a matter is and what it has been billed. It does not tell a paralegal what should happen next, or flag a case that has sat untouched for three weeks. Filevine does that with project types, phases and deadline chains, so the system drives the work instead of recording it.
The trigger is usually a change in practice mix. A firm that started on hourly family or estate work has picked up personal injury or volume litigation, and the team is managing those files in spreadsheets beside PracticePanther. Filevine absorbs that spreadsheet, so medical bills, liens, providers, negotiation notes and deadlines become fields you can report on.
The trade is real. Filevine is lighter than PracticePanther on hourly billing and trust accounting, so firms with a substantial hourly book often keep a billing system alongside it. Filevine also needs someone inside the firm to own the configuration. If nobody has that time, you get a more expensive version of the problem you have now.
PracticePanther
A cloud practice management system aimed at solo and small general practice firms that bill for their time.
- Quick to learn and roll out
- Straightforward time entry and invoicing
- Built-in trust and operating ledgers
- Intake forms and integrated payments
- Zapier and a documented API for light automation
- Light on phase-driven litigation workflow
- No native medical treatment tracking
- Reporting is thin for high-volume caseloads
- Document automation is basic
Filevine
A project-based case management platform that firms configure heavily around their own phases, sections and custom fields.
- Deep configurability per project type
- Phases and deadline chains drive the work
- Strong document automation and templates
- Lead Docket for intake and marketing attribution
- Reporting across the fields you configure
- Configuration-heavy to build and maintain
- Billing and trust accounting are lighter than general practice tools
- Needs an internal owner to stay clean
- Cost of change grows with the configuration
What moves, and where it lands
How PracticePanther records map to Filevine. Every row is reviewed with your team before anything is imported.
| PracticePanther | Filevine | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Matters | →Projects | Settle project types first; project type controls every field a case receives. |
| Contacts and Companies | →Contacts and Org Contacts | Filevine separates people from organizations more strictly than PracticePanther does. |
| Custom Fields | →Sections and Custom Fields | Group flat PracticePanther fields into logical Filevine sections, not one long list. |
| Documents | →Docs | Map PracticePanther folders to Filevine doc folders and categories before loading. |
| Notes | →Notes and Activity Feed | Migrated notes land in the feed with original author and date preserved. |
| Tasks | →Tasks | Open tasks only; closed tasks add noise and slow the project feed. |
| Events | →Calendar | Future events migrate; recurring series usually need rebuilding in Filevine. |
| Time Entries | →Filevine time entries or archive | Confirm your Filevine billing scope early, since hourly history may have no home. |
| Invoices | →Docs (PDF archive) | Most firms archive invoice PDFs on the project rather than rebuilding bills. |
What to watch for
- PracticePanther custom fields are one flat list per matter. Filevine fields live inside sections that vary by project type, so you have to decide the section design before you can map a single field. Doing this in the wrong order is the most common reason these projects run long.
- Trust accounting is the biggest gap. PracticePanther trust ledgers have no direct equivalent in most Filevine configurations, so plan to keep trust in your accounting or billing platform and migrate balances rather than transaction history.
- Historical time entries often have nowhere natural to sit in Filevine if you are not running Filevine billing. Agree in advance whether hourly history is migrated, reported out of PracticePanther before shutdown, or archived as PDFs.
- Filevine deadline chains calculate from anchor dates such as date of loss or date of filing. Those dates frequently live in PracticePanther note text rather than fields, so expect a cleanup pass to extract them before any deadline will calculate correctly.
- If you use PracticePanther intake forms and want Lead Docket, treat that as a second project. Lead Docket has its own field design, phone routing and marketing attribution setup, and it is rarely worth forcing into the same cutover weekend.
- Filevine document automation only pays off once your templates are rebuilt for it. PracticePanther merge templates will not carry across, so budget for converting the twenty or so documents your team actually uses.
Six to twelve weeks is a realistic range, and the configuration design phase is usually longer than the data load. The drivers are how many project types you need, how much of your case data currently lives in notes and spreadsheets rather than fields, and whether Lead Docket is in scope. Firms that pilot one project type with a small group before full rollout tend to land better even though the calendar looks longer.
Questions about this move
Does Filevine replace our billing system?
What happens to our matter numbers?
How much configuration should exist before we migrate data?
Should we migrate closed matters?
Move from PracticePanther to Filevine.
Tell us how many matters, users, and documents are involved. We will come back with a plan, a field map, and a realistic timeline.