Practice software terms
Law firm software data ownership: what the vendors' terms say
Updated
Most practice management contracts on our board say the data is the firm's. The clauses that matter come next: the vendor's own use and the exit.
Whose data the contract says it is
5 of the 6 vendors on our board state that the customer owns its data; the remaining contract does not say. For a firm, that ownership clause is the starting point for any licence, not the end of the question.
The vendor's pooled use
2 of 6 keep a right to use customer data in aggregated or anonymised form. A legal AI buyer will want to know whether a version of the same data can already reach the market through the vendor.
The exit window
Three contracts on the board name a fixed number of days to take data out at the end; the windows we read were 20, 30 and 90 days. A firm that cannot get its history out cannot deliver it to anyone, so the exit clause is worth knowing before any negotiation.