Start with one real workflow, not a feature list
A long feature list tells you very little about whether the people in your firm will use a system. Take one matter the team understands, replace its names and documents with fictional details, and walk it from opening to the next client update. The test should cross the boundaries where work usually gets lost: an instruction arrives, a date changes, a task is handed over, a bill is sent and a payment comes in.
Ask the person who would actually enter each step to do it. If the partner likes the dashboard but the associate cannot record a court outcome after a long day, adoption will be difficult. If the accounts colleague cannot explain an outstanding balance from the record, the bill screen alone is not enough.
For a Nigerian firm, check the details rather than the “built for Nigeria” label. Can bills be expressed clearly in naira and show VAT only where appropriate? Are court dates entered and checked by the lawyers responsible for them? Can staff in the places you practise get support when a handover or client update is urgent? A capable foreign product might still fit; a local product might still miss your firm’s actual workflow.
- Can you find the client and every matter they have with the firm?
- Can the team identify the next date, its source and the person responsible for preparation?
- Can a colleague who was absent understand what happened without searching a chat?
- Can accounts identify the bill, each receipt and the amount still due?
Test bills and client money as different questions
A client owing professional fees is different from the firm holding money for a client. In a demo, ask to see a bill paid in two instalments and a receipt that does not belong to an invoice. Ask how the system prevents a receipt from being silently counted twice and how corrections are recorded. If the firm holds client money, ask for a client-and-matter ledger, approval history, bank reconciliation and a statement that can be checked against the bank.
Do not accept “we do accounting” as the whole answer. Ask which controls are live now, which require a separate module, and which the firm must still perform outside the software. The person responsible for the books should test this part before any historical balances are imported.
Make confidentiality a demonstration, not a badge
A law firm needs to know who can open a matter, who can download a document, and what happens when someone leaves. Ask a vendor to show role permissions and a matter that a user is not allowed to see. Ask whether staff must use two-step sign-in, whether shared links expire, and whether access to sensitive records is logged.
Then ask for the recovery story: what is backed up, how often, where copies are held, who can restore them and when a restore was last tested. Ask how your firm can export its data if it stops using the product. A written privacy notice matters, but the daily controls and a tested recovery process matter more than a vague “secure cloud” claim.
- Show an unauthorised staff account trying to access another matter or firm.
- Show how a former team member loses access.
- Explain where documents and backups are stored and who administers them.
- Demonstrate an export and a restore test with synthetic data.
Price the change, not just the subscription
Ask which current records must move first: active matters, clients, dates, unpaid bills and documents. You probably do not need ten years of every file on day one. Agree who checks imported balances and dates, who trains staff, and what happens if the first week exposes a missing workflow.
Compare the full first-year cost: subscription, onboarding, extra users, storage, support, data migration and the time your own team will spend cleaning old records. A low monthly price can still be costly if adoption fails or your data is hard to leave with.
Use the pilot to answer one decision
Pick a small, representative set of active matters and name the staff who will test intake, a diary change, a handover and a part-payment. Agree what “working” means before the trial starts: the next date is visible to everyone who needs it, the client can be updated from the matter record, and accounts can explain what is owed.
FirmStack is built around these daily connections for Nigerian firms, with assisted pilot setup. We would rather walk through your real process and identify a gap than claim every accounting or practice-area requirement is already solved. That is the right conversation to have before a firm commits its records.