Do you actually know where your client data lives?
Nigel Williams, product director and interim head at LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions, shares the importance of robust data management along with the operational and regulatory risks of fragmented or siloed data storage.
Law firms take compliance seriously. There are written policies and risk registers. Processes are documented as much as possible. If you ask a partner whether their firm manages data responsibly, the answer will almost always be a confident “yes.”
But, the certainty softens at the slightly uncomfortable question: “Do you know exactly where your client data lives?”
When every system tells a different story
The reality is that most firms are not operating with a single, clean source of truth. They are operating with layers. Layers of systems, processes, historical decisions and workarounds built for speed rather than structure.
Add a merger or acquisition, and the complexity instantly multiplies. When a firm acquires another organisation, they also acquire different tools and different ways of working. Mapping and pointing all those systems, processes, and data points back to the firm’s core data engine is a huge, time-consuming, and complicated exercise.
The easier option then becomes workarounds — a practice group implements a tool that solves an immediate problem. Another team builds a spreadsheet that makes life easier. A legacy system remains because no one has the appetite to replace it.
Each decision makes sense in isolation. However, together, they create fragmentation, with the firm ending up with different data silos for different types of information. Of course, from the outside it looks manageable, but for most stakeholders on the inside, the situation is immensely frustrating.
Blind spots in governance
From a governance perspective, it’s something else entirely.
Consider what happens when duplication creeps in. A client record exists more than once. A matter is recorded in one system but referenced differently in another. A debtor flag is attached to one entity but not its duplicate. A conflict check relies on incomplete information.
The operational risk is stark. Say a client is recorded four times in the system with a ‘do not act’ flag in one instance because they haven’t paid their bill. The firm will not know if all four sets of records have been considered, because no system is responsible for resolving them into one authoritative view.
This isn’t theoretical exposure, it’s practical vulnerability — and vulnerability does not always present as a crisis. Sometimes it presents as doubt or perhaps as a quiet anxiety in risk committees. In such situations, a compliance officer will know that if the regulator asked the right question, their answer might potentially involve several caveats.
Proof is the critical word
Today, almost every firm has a data management challenge. As regulatory scrutiny sharpens, the expectation of regulators has decidedly moved from policy to proof.
It’s no longer enough to say files are retained appropriately. Firms must be able to demonstrate retention discipline. It’s no longer enough to assume client data is stored securely. Firms must be able to show where data resides and how it‘s governed.
This is where the conversation moves beyond compliance and into business clarity. Fragmented data not only creates regulatory risk, but it also creates commercial blindness. Here’s a revealing anecdote. In a law firm, a practice team was busy and the work was flowing. So, the practice looked healthy. But when the firm finally brought its matter data together, it became clear that activity had been mistaken for performance – and that the practice was underperforming on every matter.
Without clean, consolidated matter data, firms cannot reliably assess profitability, pricing accuracy, workflow efficiency, or risk exposure. Busyness is often confused with performance, and volume with profit and margins.
AI arrives
And just as firms begin to confront these realities, AI enters the room. AI promises acceleration, insight at scale, and competitive advantage. But here’s the critical bit: AI does not correct structural weakness — it magnifies it.
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions in the market is that firms thought AI would solve their data problems. On the contrary, if data isn’t structured, AI will amplify data chaos.
AI relies on clean, consistent metadata. If client entities are duplicated, naming conventions are inconsistent, and matter information is incomplete or siloed, AI will generate output that looks confident but is fundamentally flawed. Structural data control is imperative.
Structured data control, built-in governance
But what does structural control actually look like? It begins with design so that the matters and the data surrounding them live in a coherent environment rather than across disconnected systems.
Case and matter management platforms such as Lexis Visualfiles and Lexis Everyfile are often viewed through the lens of workflow efficiency. That is only part of their value. Their deeper strength lies in how they structure information.
For instance, if a change in an email address or contact number is recorded in one location, the amendment automatically filters through the rest of the system. This ensures a single client record that consistently appears everywhere. This is governance-embedded architecture.
Data retention is another challenge. Law firms are cautious institutions. They tend to hold onto information. While digital storage makes it easy to defer deletion decisions, holding data beyond its retention period creates numerous business risks.
It’s possible to remove expired data in a controlled way. For example, the data deletion tool in Lexis Visualfiles enables structured, disciplined deletion of old files that have passed their retention period in a safe and defensible way.
It is a myth that data management, consolidation, and governance impose rigid uniformity. With systems such as Lexis Visualfiles and Lexis Everyfile, firms have the building blocks to continuously develop their application to meet evolving business requirements.
Clean data is a control story, not a fear story
When firms can genuinely say they know where their data lives, something shifts. Risk becomes manageable rather than assumed. Leadership conversations become evidence-based rather than anecdotal. AI strategy becomes credible rather than speculative.
The test is simple: if someone asked tomorrow — without warning — where every piece of client data sits, who can access it, and how long it stays there, could your firm answer confidently? Or would you hesitate?”
Today, competitive advantage belongs to firms with the cleanest foundation, not with the most tools.
If data control is an area that challenges your firm, speak with your Lexis Visualfiles or Lexis Everyfile Account Manager to help make clean data normal in your organisation.
