Buying Process
What data must be ready before implementation?
Updated July 2026
Far less than most buyers expect. The real prerequisite is executive buy-in, not a data-cleanup project. Most litigation data arrives from defense counsel as status reports, depositions, and demands, and the platform does the structuring. You do not need to pre-clean, migrate, or normalize your files first. Line up sponsorship and access, and the data readiness largely takes care of itself.
What data do you actually need ready before implementation?
Less than a migration mindset assumes. You need access to what defense counsel already produces and a clear owner on your side. You do not need a cleaned data warehouse, a normalized schema, or a completed extract from your claims system. The platform reads counsel work product and structures it, so the readiness that matters is organizational: who sponsors it and who grants access.
- Access to defense counsel work product: the status reports, depositions, demands, and expert reports counsel already sends.
- A clear internal owner: someone accountable for the rollout and empowered to unblock access.
- Executive sponsorship: a leader who wants the litigated book made visible and will back the adoption.
- Standard security and access review: the same diligence you run for any platform touching privileged material.
Notice what is absent from that list: a data-cleanup project, a schema-mapping exercise, or a claims-system extract completed before you start. Those belong to a migration, and a litigation layer is not a migration. It works from the prose your outside counsel already produces, which means the readiness bar is about people and access, not about a pre-implementation data effort.
Why is executive buy-in the real prerequisite?
Because adoption, not data quality, decides whether the platform works. The information will flow in from defense counsel regardless. What determines success is whether claims leaders require the litigated book to be visible and act on what they see. Without a sponsor, a technically live platform gets ignored. With one, access gets unblocked, counsel gets told to route work product in, and the tool becomes how the team works.
- Name an executive sponsor who wants the litigated book visible and owns the outcome.
- Have that sponsor set the expectation that defense counsel route work product into the platform.
- Give the internal owner authority to grant access and clear blockers quickly.
- Measure adoption, not go-live, so the sponsor can see whether the team is actually using it.
Where does the litigation data come from?
Mostly from outside, not from your own systems. The core inputs are the documents defense counsel already produces on every matter, and the platform structures them into scored, current records. Your claims system contributes reference data later, through an API connection, but it is not a prerequisite for starting. That is why the data-prep burden is smaller than buyers expect: the richest source is already being generated for you.
| Source | What it provides | Who prepares it |
|---|---|---|
| Defense counsel work product | Status reports, depositions, demands, expert reports | Counsel already produces it; the platform structures it |
| Your claims system | Reference data on matters and parties, synced later | Connected through an API when the timing suits you |
| Your team | Access, sponsorship, and adoption | The one input that genuinely must be ready first |
Why do buyers overestimate the data-prep burden?
Because they pattern-match to a system migration, where you clean and map data before go-live. A litigation layer is not that. It reads the prose counsel already sends, so there is no warehouse to build and no schema to normalize first. The instinct to run a data-cleanup project before starting is the single biggest self-imposed delay, and it holds the litigated book dark for months longer than necessary.
- Migration thinking: assuming a claims-system extract must be cleaned and mapped before anything can start.
- Schema anxiety: believing the data must be normalized in advance, when the platform structures it on ingest.
- Underweighting counsel work product: forgetting that the richest litigation data is already produced on every matter.
- Overweighting IT: treating this as an integration project when the first-value path needs no build.
Common questions
Do we need to clean or migrate our claims data before implementation?
No. That expectation comes from system-migration projects, where a data-cleanup and mapping effort has to finish before go-live. A litigation layer does not work that way. Its primary inputs are the documents defense counsel already produces, and the platform structures them on ingest, so there is no warehouse to build and no schema to normalize in advance. Your claims system connects later through an API to share reference data, on a schedule that suits you, and even that is not a prerequisite for starting to score and organize the litigated book. Treating this as a migration is the most common self-imposed delay we see. It keeps the litigated file dark for months while a cleanup runs that the platform never actually required.
Migrating matters when you switch systems→What is the one thing that genuinely must be ready?
Executive buy-in and a clear internal owner. The data will flow in from defense counsel regardless, but adoption is what decides whether the platform delivers. That takes a sponsor who wants the litigated book made visible, sets the expectation that counsel route their work product in, and backs the internal owner who grants access and clears blockers. When that sponsorship exists, a platform that reads counsel work product becomes how the team works within weeks. When it does not, even a perfectly configured tool sits unused while the litigated stretch of every claim stays invisible. So the readiness that matters is organizational, not technical. Line up the sponsor and the owner first, and the rest of the readiness question mostly answers itself.
The litigation intelligence maturity curve→How long does it take to see the first insight once we start?
Faster than a migration timeline suggests, because there is no build standing between you and the data. The platform reads defense counsel work product you already have, structures it, and starts scoring cases without waiting on a claims-system extract or a cleanup project. That means the first structured view of a litigated file can arrive early, while the broader rollout and any later API connection proceed in parallel. The gating factor is usually access and adoption, not engineering. Once counsel work product is routed in and the team is set up, the litigated book begins to become visible in a matter of weeks rather than the quarters a full system integration would take. Speed here is a direct consequence of not treating this as a migration.
How long does implementation take?→CaseGlide is the litigation intelligence platform for Fortune 500 legal departments and insurance claims organizations. It structures live litigation data from defense counsel into executive decisions: reducing defense spend, settling the right cases sooner, and shrinking litigated claim volume.
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