Proclaim Alternative UK: Your Options as Evo Arrives

If you are searching for a Proclaim alternative, it is almost certainly because Access Legal has launched CaseMatters Evo, its AI-powered successor to Proclaim, and your firm now faces a migration whichever way you jump. Writford is the alternative built for firms that want to use that forced moment to move to an AI-first workspace: live research from legislation.gov.uk, BAILII and SRA guidance, matter management, time recording, billing, document analysis and a native Outlook add-in, from £59 per seat per month on a 14-day free trial.

This is not a hit piece on Access. Proclaim earned its install base, and for some firms Evo will be the right answer. But a platform succession is the one moment when "stay put" stops being the zero-cost option, so it is worth doing the comparison properly before you sign anything. We verified the claims below against Access Legal's own pages and legal press coverage in July 2026.

What is actually happening to Proclaim?

Access Legal launched CaseMatters Evo in January 2026, describing it as a next-generation, browser-based, AI-native case management platform that "builds on the power of Access Legal Proclaim and reimagines it for how law firms work today". The launch claims are aggressive: up to five billable hours reclaimed per fee earner per week, internal modelling of up to £846,000 in recovered billable capacity annually for a 20-person firm, and everyday interactions described as dramatically faster than Proclaim.

Two facts matter for your planning. First, Access says Evo preserves existing Proclaim customisations while enabling new configuration, which is a genuine migration sweetener for heavily customised firms. Second, Proclaim is still listed as a product and Access has not published an end-of-support date. So there is no cliff edge today, but the direction of travel is unambiguous: new investment is going into Evo, and Proclaim firms are being invited to move. When the vendor's own marketing contrasts the new platform's speed with the old one's, you should read that as the beginning of the end of the old one.

Proclaim, CaseMatters Evo and Writford compared

Sources: Access Legal's CaseMatters Evo and Proclaim product pages, Legal Futures launch coverage (January 2026), and Writford. Confirm current details with each vendor.

Why a forced migration is the right time to re-evaluate

The economics of switching software are dominated by migration cost, which is why firms tolerate systems they dislike for years. A vendor-led platform succession changes that maths. You are going to scope a data migration, retrain staff and re-test your workflows whether you stay or go. The marginal cost of pointing that same project at a different vendor has never been lower, and it will never be this low again.

That makes this the moment to ask the questions you have deferred. Are you paying a price you have never been able to benchmark, because it has only ever existed in a quote? Do you actually use the workflow customisations you are being told are the reason to stay? Is your team doing research and drafting in a browser tab outside the case management system anyway? If the honest answers are yes, yes-but-only-three-of-them, and yes, then the succession is your exit window. The same logic applied when firms re-evaluated Actionstep; it applies with more force when the vendor is the one initiating the change.

Where Access still genuinely wins

Be honest about this, because switching to the wrong tool is worse than staying. Access's core strength is deep, configurable process automation at volume. A claimant PI factory running thousands of live matters through staged workflows, or a conveyancing operation processing high volumes with tight task discipline, is exactly what Proclaim was built for and what Evo is built to continue. Evo's promise to carry existing customisations across is a real advantage no external vendor can match, and the Access ecosystem (accounting, compliance, HR) suits firms that want one enterprise supplier.

Writford does not attempt that. It is a general UK legal workspace, not a practice-area workflow engine, and a firm whose business model is process automation at enterprise scale should weight that heavily. Our guide to personal injury case management software covers that segment in more depth.

Where Writford fits

Writford is the right destination for firms leaving Proclaim who want a modern AI workspace rather than a rebuilt workflow engine: small and mid-sized practices, mixed-work firms, and teams whose fee earners spend more time reading, researching and drafting than executing staged processes. You get matter management, time recording, billing with UK VAT, disbursements and aged debtors, document analysis, client management, a native Outlook add-in and a mobile app (Android live; iOS coming soon), with AI on every plan. It is the wrong destination for a volume PI or remortgage operation that lives on automated workflow stages; that firm should evaluate Evo seriously.

What Writford offers that the Access route does not

Transparent pricing. Neither Proclaim nor Evo publishes a price. Writford does: Standard £59 per seat per month billed annually (£69 monthly), Premium £91 (£99 monthly), Pro £174 (£199 monthly), with AI included on every plan and no minimum contract. You can benchmark it against a quote before your account manager has replied to your email. Full detail is on the pricing page.

Research with citations, from live sources. Writford retrieves live from legislation.gov.uk, BAILII and SRA guidance, so research and drafting come back cited against current law rather than a model's training data. Case management systems, including AI-era ones, embed AI in workflow tasks; Writford treats research and document analysis as the core of the product.

A published DPA and UK data residency. Data is processed in the UK and EEA on AWS's London region, customer data is never used to train models, and the DPA is published rather than produced on request. For firms doing their vendor due diligence properly, that shortens the procurement conversation considerably.

A trial instead of a demo. Fourteen days on real matters, no credit card, no implementation project. The fastest way to find out whether a workspace fits your firm is to run a live file through it.

Migration considerations before you move anywhere

Whether you choose Evo, Writford or anything else, the same checklist applies. Confirm exactly what data moves: matters, contacts, documents, time entries, ledgers and WIP, and in what format Proclaim exports them. Map the workflows you genuinely use, not everything that was configured in 2018; most firms find a fraction of their customisations carry real value. Run old and new systems in parallel for one full billing cycle and reconcile the month end before cutting over. Keep your Proclaim export archived for your full retention period. And get any migration promises, including Evo's customisation-preservation claim, into the contract rather than the brochure.

For a broader evaluation framework, see our matter management software guide.

The bottom line

Proclaim firms are not choosing whether to migrate; Access made that decision when it launched CaseMatters Evo. They are choosing where to migrate. Firms built on high-volume, heavily customised process automation will find Evo the lower-risk path, and that is a fair outcome. Firms that stayed on Proclaim through inertia, and whose real work is research, drafting, documents and billing, should treat this as the cheapest switching window they will ever get, and evaluate an AI-first workspace with published pricing against the quote in front of them.

Try Writford free for 14 days, no credit card required, or see a feature overview.