Migrate from Filevine to Mailchimp

Filevine individual contacts map directly to Mailchimp subscribers. The email address is the unique identifier in Mailchimp and serves as the primary key for subscriber records. Contacts without a valid email address are exported to a separate review file for manual correction before import into Mailchimp. This ensures data integrity and prevents incomplete records from entering the system.

Filevine company contacts do not have a Mailchimp equivalent as standalone records since Mailchimp's subscriber model requires an email address per contact. To handle this, we map the company name to a CUSTOMER_COMPANY merge field on the individual contact record, keeping the email-based subscriber model intact. This preserves the company information while adhering to Mailchimp's data structure requirements.

Mailchimp's standard merge fields FNAME and LNAME accept first name and last name directly from Filevine without any transformation required. These are reserved merge fields that do not need custom configuration. Null or blank name fields in Filevine populate with an empty string in Mailchimp, which displays as blank in the subscriber profile without causing errors.

Filevine contact email maps to the Mailchimp subscriber EMAIL field, which is the required primary key for all subscriber records. Mailchimp validates email format before import; any invalid addresses are flagged in the migration report with a specific error code for correction before re-submission.

Filevine's separate phone and mobilephone fields are consolidated into a single PHONE merge field in Mailchimp. When both phone and mobilephone are present on a contact record, the mobilephone value takes precedence. If only phone is available, it serves as the fallback value for the PHONE merge field.

Filevine's street, city, state, postalcode, and country fields map to Mailchimp's structured ADDRESS merge field using the standard ADDR1, ADDR2, CITY, STATE, ZIP, and COUNTRY subfields. This preserves the structured format that Mailchimp uses for geographic segmentation and mail quality validation.

Every Filevine custom field on a contact becomes a Mailchimp merge field prefixed with FVLDS_ to avoid collisions with Mailchimp's reserved field names. Field type is inferred: date fields become text in YYYY-MM-DD format; yes/no becomes a Y/N text value; dropdown becomes a text value matching the selected option.

Filevine's person-field associations linking a contact to a project generate Mailchimp tags. Each project type name becomes a tag namespace (e.g., PI_CASE, FAMILY_LAW). Active phase names within a project append as sub-tags (e.g., PI_CASE / Discovery). A contact associated with three projects receives three tags.

Filevine phase status (e.g., Intake, Litigation, Settlement) is preserved as a tag suffix per project. Mailchimp segments can be built to filter subscribers by phase tag prefix, enabling case-status-based email targeting. For example, a segment can target all subscribers in the Settlement phase for follow-up campaigns.

Filevine person fields storing contact roles (e.g., Plaintiff, Opposing Counsel, Witness) are mapped to a MAILCHIMP_ROLE merge field on the subscriber. This field is created as a custom merge field before migration runs and preserves the contact's role context for each associated project.

Filevine calendar events, deadlines, and deadline chains have no Mailchimp equivalent. These records are exported as a CSV reference file for manual review but do not migrate into Mailchimp. The export includes event name, due date, assignee, and linked contact information for your team to recreate in another system.

Filevine billing items are financial records tied to projects including time entries, expenses, flat fees, invoice generation, and payment attribution. Mailchimp has no billing or financial tracking capability. Billing data is exported as a separate CSV for accounting-side reconciliation but is not imported into Mailchimp.

Filevine documents stored in Docs+, DocGen outputs, and Vinesign signed files do not migrate to Mailchimp. Mailchimp supports campaign attachments only, not document management. Filevine documents remain in Filevine storage; a file inventory CSV is exported from Filevine for firm records.

Filevine phase-based task workflows and DocGen workflow templates are not exported by the API. We provide a workflow audit export listing each workflow name, trigger, and action sequence so your Mailchimp admin can rebuild Customer Journeys from the reference. Workflow definitions require manual reconstruction in Mailchimp's builder.