Migrate from Aderant Expert to Mailchimp

Aderant stores attorney, client, and party contacts in the ContactPerson table. FlitStack extracts all contact rows with email addresses and imports them as Mailchimp subscribers. Rows without email addresses are flagged separately for manual review — Mailchimp requires an email address as the unique identifier for every subscriber.

Aderant's firm or organization name on a contact maps directly to Mailchimp's built-in ORGANIZATION merge field. This is a straightforward string transfer — the organization value transfers as-is from Aderant to the Mailchimp subscriber profile. Once in Mailchimp, the ORGANIZATION field appears on every subscriber's contact record and can be used for list segmentation, such as filtering all contacts by their associated firm or company name for targeted marketing campaigns.

Aderant's contact_type discriminator values — Attorney, Client, Vendor, Mediator, and other role categories — are transformed into Mailchimp tags applied to each subscriber record. Each contact receives one or more role-based tags corresponding to their Aderant designation. These tags enable targeted segmentation for email campaigns: attorney-only announcements, client newsletters, vendor communications, and mediator-specific updates can all be directed to the appropriate audience subset using Mailchimp's tag-based filtering.

Aderant practice-area assignments (from the Matter table linked to the contact) map to both a PRACTICEAREA merge tag and a tag on the contact record. Storing it as both allows segmentation by practice area (via tags) and personalization in email copy (via merge tag merge field).

Aderant's billing_status field on the Matter or Bill record linked to each contact becomes a BILLSTATUS merge tag assigned to the corresponding Mailchimp subscriber. Active-matter clients are tagged for inclusion in regular newsletter distributions. Writing-off, on-hold, or closed-matter clients can be suppressed from marketing outreach automatically using Mailchimp's segment filter logic to exclude those billing status values, ensuring marketing emails reach only appropriate recipients.

Aderant client and matter numbers have no Mailchimp equivalent and are stored as custom merge fields CLIENT_ID and MATTER_NUM. These are non-functional reference fields — used by the firm's admin to reconcile Mailchimp contacts back to Aderant records without exposing internal IDs to email recipients.

Aderant contact phone numbers are mapped to Mailchimp's built-in PHONE merge field for each subscriber. This mapping enables future SMS opt-in strategies if the firm decides to enable mobile messaging through Mailchimp. The primary phone number for each contact is transferred directly; any alternate or secondary phone numbers (such as mobile or office extensions) are preserved as contact notes within the Mailchimp subscriber profile rather than overwriting the primary PHONE field.

Aderant stores address components in separate database columns: ADDR_LINE1, ADDR_LINE2, CITY, STATE, ZIP, and COUNTRY. Mailchimp's ADDRESS merge field requires a structured 4-line format for postal delivery. FlitStack consolidates these separate columns into Mailchimp's MAILADDR.street, MAILADDR.city, MAILADDR.state, MAILADDR.zip, and MAILADDR.country format — preserving all original address components and ensuring complete postal address data transfers correctly to each Mailchimp subscriber record.

Aderant custom fields added via SQL to the ContactPerson table — such as bar_number, billing_rate, or client_credit_limit — become Mailchimp custom merge fields (BAR_NUM, BILL_RATE, CREDIT_LIM). These are informational only; they enable firm-admins to segment by billing tier or bar-status in Mailchimp without returning to Aderant.

Aderant stores workflow logic in SQL stored procedures and desktop UI states — these are legal billing and practice management automations with no semantic equivalent in an email marketing platform. FlitStack documents the workflow definitions as a reference for rebuilding any marketing sequences in Mailchimp's Customer Journey builder.

Aderant invoice data (amount billed, payment status, WIP, trust balance) has no Mailchimp equivalent. Invoices are billing records, not contact attributes. If the firm wants clients to receive invoices via Mailchimp email, the invoice itself must be generated in Aderant and sent separately — Mailchimp can hold the contact list but not the billing data.

Aderant time and expense records are granular billing entries tied to matters. These do not map to Mailchimp's model — Mailchimp contacts do not carry time-entry history. If a firm wants to communicate matter-status changes (e.g., 'your invoice is ready'), a custom integration or manual process is required beyond the initial contact migration.