Retiring, merging or selling the practice
Sell my law firm? Read this before the files go anywhere
Updated
A buyer for the practice and a buyer for its records are two different conversations. Both meet the same client files, so the duty of confidentiality decides what either may see, and your practice software decides what you can still take out.
The short answer for a selling partner
Agree what the acquiring firm may inspect before it inspects anything, take a complete export of the matter system while your subscription runs, and treat any licence of records to an AI developer as a separate question for counsel, decided only on material with every client identifier removed.
What the SRA says about files in a merger or acquisition
The SRA's confidentiality guidance asks a firm to consider what it actually needs to disclose and what is already public or can be given without client specifics, such as billing aggregated into bands. It says any disclosure of confidential information should only be with consent and limited to what the purpose needs, and that the terms should limit who sees the data and require its return or destruction if the deal does not proceed.
Source: SRA, confidentiality of client information
The same guidance records a regulated firm that was fined after it handed unredacted client matter files to a firm proposing to acquire it, without the clients' knowledge or consent; the firm that inspected them was fined too.
Your case management contract on the day you hand over
An acquirer that moves your matters onto its own system ends your subscription, and the clock in your vendor's exit clause starts then. On this board 3 of the 6 vendors give a set number of days after termination, from 20 at Actionstep to 90 at PracticePanther; Hoowla provides a back-up when asked, and Karbon promises no export at all.
Source: Law firm software data terms
Records a sale does not switch off
Customer due diligence records under regulation 40 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 are kept for five years from the day the firm knows the transaction is complete or the business relationship has ended. Our retention table sets those periods out against the rule each one comes from.
Source: Law firm record retention
Who says it takes legal records for AI
We read the pages where data buyers and marketplaces describe what they take. Most of the buyers on our register name legal work; five of them are below, each quoted on the dataset page with the day it was read.
Source: Law firm data buyers
- FileYield lists court filings, contracts and legal briefs among the data it brokers, and says it does not remove personal data itself.
- micro1 has a legal and contracts category covering policies, contract workflows and review processes, and says companies keep ownership of the underlying data.
- Mercor lists Legal among the industries it targets, with contracts, case files and discovery docs as the examples, and de-identifies what a firm connects.
- Grepped takes the records a business keeps in its tools without naming legal work, and strips customer names, contact details and identifying information before anything leaves processing.
- Mode offers legal services as an industry, de-identifies an agreed copy and says your original records and systems stay with you.
What this site will and will not do
This site reads contracts and public pages; it gives no advice on confidentiality and makes no offer for a practice or its files. If your counsel has decided what may leave the firm, the form records what you hold so the question can be scoped.