Migrate from The Plaintiff to Pipedrive

The Plaintiff's client contact records map directly to Pipedrive Persons. Name, email, phone, address, and company association transfer as-is. A Person record must exist before any related Deal or Activity can link to it — we sequence Person migration first so downstream objects can reference the new Pipedrive person_id.

The Plaintiff's legal matters map to Pipedrive Deals but the paradigm shifts from case-centric to deal-centric. Each matter becomes one Deal in Pipedrive's pipeline. Matter status (open, pending, closed) maps to Pipedrive stage values. The matter number becomes a custom field on the Deal since Pipedrive Deals do not have a native case-number field. If The Plaintiff uses multiple matter types (litigation, transactional, advisory), these can map to separate Pipedrive pipelines for segmented pipeline views.

The Plaintiff's organizational records for law firms, corporate clients, and opposing counsel map to Pipedrive Organizations. Organization name, industry, address, website, and employee count transfer directly. Pipedrive Organizations can have multiple linked Persons, which mirrors The Plaintiff's model of multiple contacts per client organization.

Billable time entries from The Plaintiff cannot map to Pipedrive's native billing model since Pipedrive does not have built-in time tracking. We preserve time entry data as Notes on the related Deal or Person with a custom field capturing hours and billing rate. For time and billing workflows, Pipedrive's Activity history provides the underlying record for rebuilding billing integrations.

Documents attached to matters in The Plaintiff download via API and re-upload to Pipedrive Files. Each file attaches to the corresponding Deal or Person record via Pipedrive's file linking model. Google Drive links in The Plaintiff are not included in API exports and must be handled separately — we document these as exceptions in the migration plan.

Court dates and scheduled appearances from The Plaintiff map to Pipedrive Events with the original date, time, and description preserved. Pipedrive Events require StartDateTime and EndDateTime — we assign a default duration of 60 minutes when The Plaintiff's calendar entries lack an end time. Events link to the related Person or Deal.

Email correspondence logged against matters in The Plaintiff migrates as Pipedrive Email Activities. The subject, body text, sender, recipient, timestamp, and any attachments transfer intact. Pipedrive's email sync feature can then be configured post-migration to automatically link new incoming and outgoing emails to the correct Deal or Person records, maintaining continuous correspondence history in Pipedrive.

The Plaintiff's custom fields on matters — such as practice area, referral source, opposing counsel, or case priority — require Pipedrive custom fields. We create these via the Pipedrive API using the field type closest to The Plaintiff's schema (picklist, varchar, number, date). Custom field hash keys are unique per Pipedrive account — we regenerate them during migration setup rather than hardcoding references.

The Plaintiff's attorney and staff users map to Pipedrive Users by email matching. Before migration, all active Pipedrive users must be provisioned so records can assign OwnerId during import. Unmatched users from The Plaintiff flag as exceptions — either invite them to Pipedrive or assign their records to a fallback user.

Prospect matters in The Plaintiff that represent early-stage potential cases map to Pipedrive Leads. Pipedrive Leads inherit Deal custom fields — we create Lead-specific custom fields for referral source and inquiry type to preserve The Plaintiff's intake data. Leads can convert to Person + Deal when an engagement is confirmed.