Migrating from Q-Law

Firms say Q-Law; Vertican's current enterprise product is Q-LawE. Two things shape a migration off it and both are answerable before you speak to anyone: how your user licenses are counted since the move from perpetual to subscription, and whether your change-tracking tables have already been truncated.

Which product is this page about?

Vertican sells Q-LawE as its enterprise platform — "Q-LawE is Vertican's Enterprise software product" — and, confusingly for anyone searching, the product page lives at vertican.com/q-law/. Firms and recruiters still say Q-Law, which is how this page is titled. Everything below is sourced to Vertican's own product page, its November 2022 licensing guide, and its February 2025 Mastermind decks; nothing is sourced to a sales conversation. (Vertican Technologies, Q-LawE product page; accessed 25 July 2026.)

The licensing change, in their words

The November 2022 guide states it plainly: "Vertican Technologies is migrating perpetual Q-LawE users to subscription users. Each Q-LawE named user must have a user license. User licenses can no longer be shared." It adds that administrators purchase additional licenses on the vPortal, while "A reduction of license counts must be sent to a Client Success Representative for processing", and that terminated employees should be moved to a particular access level so they stop counting as active users. For a firm planning a migration this matters for one practical reason: your renewal date and your seat count, not your enthusiasm, set the commercial window. Confirm both in writing before you build a schedule around them. (Vertican Technologies, Q-LawE User Licensing Guide, November 2022; accessed 25 July 2026.)

Find out whether change tracking has been truncated

Q-LawE's change history is stored in tables prefixed UPD_, one per tracked table, with a MaxMonths setting that governs how long detail is kept and a truncation routine that can be run manually or called by the Job Scheduler. Vertican's own release notes carry the warning: "Please be aware that once tables have been truncated, data is deleted… NOTE: This process cannot be undone." That is a housekeeping feature, not a scandal — those tables grow. It is also the single most important question to ask before a migration, because reconstructing a file as it stood on the day a complaint was filed depends on history that still exists, and records evidencing compliance are expected to be retained for three years after the last collection activity on an account under 12 CFR § 1006.100. Ask which tables have tracking enabled, what MaxMonths is set to, and when the routine last ran. (Vertican Technologies, The Latest in Q-LawE, Mastermind Series, February 2025, item QS-8050; accessed 25 July 2026.)

What carries over, and what has to be rebuilt

Data carries; configuration mostly does not. Vertican's product page lists what the platform does for you — DDAS, the multi-threaded Job Scheduler, Attorney Meaningful Review, SOL management, cost and trust accounting, media through vMedia, built-in FTP, and reporting via Q-LawE Reports and Query. Each of those is a workstream in reverse when you leave: the automation rules that advance a file, the scheduled jobs, the review checklists, the SOL basis dates and client overrides, the cost card structure, and the report set your clients receive on a schedule. Inventory the scheduled jobs first. They are the part of the system nobody remembers configuring and everybody notices stopping.

Plan the cutover the way their own guide plans an update

The licensing guide's update procedure runs: have all users log out of Q-LawE, lock Q-LawE, back up the data, download the update, run it, log back in. That is not a criticism — every installed system works this way, and a documented, boring procedure is a virtue. It is worth copying into your migration plan, because your cutover has the same shape: a quiet window, a verified backup taken with nobody in the system, a load, and a reconciliation before anyone is allowed back in. Firms that skip the quiet window are the firms that spend the following month arguing about which balance is real.

What this page does not say

It does not say you cannot build a report in Q-LawE. You can: the platform ships Reports and Query plus Quick Report within Task Manager, and the licensing guide walks a firm administrator through building one. It does not say you need a vendor engineer to change something. And it does not compare prices, because Vertican publishes none that we have found. What the sourced material does show is the shape of the work — reports created by duplicating an existing report, with a warning not to duplicate anything numbered under 500 because those "may have special programming and/or formatting", and database fields typed in by name.

What Otto asks you to bring

Two exports and one document. A placement file and a status file for your largest client, so the interface work is scoped against a real format rather than a promise. A sample of the imaging store, so provenance is tested before it is assumed. And your most recent client audit request, because that is the artefact that shows what your record has to be able to answer — and building the workflow for it against your own data is a better evaluation than any demonstration script.

This is an informational reference, not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitations periods turn on facts this page cannot know — which state's law governs, the contract type, when the claim accrued, and whether anything tolled or revived it. Confirm against the primary source and your own counsel before acting.