LEAP to Clio: how to switch without losing your documents

LEAP stores documents and correspondence as files referenced by matter, and its export tooling works matter-by-matter — LEAP's own help documentation covers exporting a matter's documents. For a whole-firm exit you have three realistic paths: per-matter export (workable for small matter counts), a bulk export arranged with LEAP support (scope and cost vary — get it in writing), or a third-party migrator like Universal Migrator that reads LEAP and writes to Clio directly.

LEAP's published transition FAQs have described a limited window after termination to extract your data — commonly cited as around 30 days, but confirm the current period in LEAP's own transition terms before relying on it. Either way, don't architect your migration around that window: do the document export while your subscription is fully active, verify it's complete, and only then give notice. The post-termination window is a safety net, not a plan.

Clio's support documentation on exporting from LEAP covers unbilled time entries (up to five years from the desktop app, or one year at a time from the web app, as Excel/CSV), unbilled expenses via the Aged Expenses report, and accounts-receivable reports. Contacts and matter metadata come across in the standard migration, and outstanding and trust balances arrive as single summative line items at time of export. Billed invoice history and trust transaction detail don't migrate — Clio's data migration overview lists accounting and financial history as non-migratable — so walk through with your onboarding rep what arrives as balances and what stays in your LEAP archive for reference.

Plan a few weeks for the core data migration — Clio's overview says processing time varies with the size and complexity of your data — and six to twelve weeks end-to-end is realistic once you include pre-export cleanup, the document exit, and post-cutover document upload. The document phase is usually the long pole for LEAP switchers — start it first, not last.

Yes — run a short parallel period. Keep LEAP read-only for reference and export verification while new work starts in Clio. Cancel only after you've confirmed the document export is complete and spot-checked that matters in Clio contain what they should. Cancelling first and exporting second is the single most expensive mistake in this migration.

Yes. Once your documents are out of LEAP and organized as a folder per matter, you can drag each folder into the matter via Clio's web UI, or use a free Chrome extension like Send to Case to bulk-upload folders and zips to the right matter. For very large libraries, or if you want folder structure and metadata handled end-to-end, a paid migrator is usually worth the quote.

A manual upload brings the latest copy of each file into Clio; it doesn't reconstruct LEAP's prior document versions or its document-management metadata, and Clio's document date reflects when you add the file rather than its original date in LEAP — though properties embedded in the file itself, like author and created date, travel with it. Clio keeps its own version history from that point forward. If original dates or full version history matter for your matters, have a paid migrator handle the documents end-to-end, or keep your LEAP export archived for reference.