Buying new software comes with the risk of developing a relationship with a vendor who might not always necessarily be there. While attorneys may be perfectly content to use the same software forever, vendors routinely update, retool, or even shutter their platforms.

While firms and legal organizations are long accustomed to dealing with changes in vendor products for their on-premise technology, the great migration into the cloud space means clients may have new difficulties recouping data if they need to make a system change.

LexisNexis announced that it planned to discontinue sales and development of its cloud-based Firm Manager software in January of this year, but legal blogger Robert Ambrogi reports that the company this week followed up with a second announcement that it would close the platform down altogether on October 31. LexisNexis spokespeople did not return multiple requests for comment.