Lotus Notes to React: Why Legal Discovery Workflows Need Visual Reverse Engineering

The 70% failure rate of legacy rewrites isn't a talent problem; it’s an information problem. In the legal discovery sector, where 20-year-old Lotus Notes databases still manage mission-critical litigation workflows, the "information gap" is a chasm. Most of these systems lack documentation, the original developers are long retired, and the business logic is buried under layers of technical debt that no one dares to touch.

When you attempt to migrate a complex legal discovery workflow from Lotus Notes to React using traditional methods, you aren't just coding—you're performing digital archaeology. You spend 80% of your budget trying to understand what the system does before you write a single line of modern code. This is why the average enterprise rewrite takes 18 to 24 months and often ends in a costly rollback.

The future of modernization isn't rewriting from scratch; it's visual reverse engineering. By recording real user workflows and extracting the underlying logic into documented React components, we can reduce the modernization timeline from years to weeks.

TL;DR: Visual reverse engineering allows enterprise teams to bypass "manual archaeology" by recording legacy Lotus Notes workflows and automatically generating documented React components, saving 70% in development time.

The Lotus Notes Trap: Why Legal Discovery is Stuck in the 90s#

Lotus Notes was the backbone of the legal industry for decades because of its robust document-level security and offline capabilities. However, in a world of cloud-native AI and rapid e-discovery, these systems have become $3.6 trillion anchors of technical debt.

Legal discovery workflows—involving complex chain-of-custody tracking, multi-level approval gates, and intricate tagging systems—are notoriously difficult to migrate. In a manual rewrite, an architect must sit with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for hundreds of hours to map out every "if/then" statement hidden in a proprietary

file.

The Cost of Manual Archaeology#

Manual reverse engineering is a bottleneck. On average, it takes 40 hours of engineering time to document, map, and recreate a single complex legacy screen. For a legal discovery platform with 50+ screens, you’re looking at a year of discovery before development even begins.

💰 ROI Insight: Replay reduces the time per screen from 40 hours to just 4 hours by automating the extraction of UI structures and business logic directly from user interactions.

From Black Box to Documented Codebase#

The primary challenge with Lotus Notes is its "black box" nature. You can see the UI, but the underlying data orchestration is often obscured by proprietary protocols. Visual reverse engineering changes the paradigm by using the video as the source of truth.

By recording an SME performing a standard legal discovery task—such as "Initiate Legal Hold" or "Review Document Set"—Replay captures the DOM state, the network calls, and the user intent. It then translates these observations into a structured format that generates high-quality React components and API contracts.

Step 1: Workflow Recording and Assessment#

Instead of reading code, you record the workflow. An SME performs the task in the legacy environment while Replay’s engine captures every state change. This eliminates the "documentation gap" that plagues 67% of legacy systems.

Step 2: Extraction and Component Mapping#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite analyzes the recording to identify reusable UI patterns. In a legal context, this might be a "Document Metadata Viewer" or a "Permission Matrix." These are then mapped to your organization’s modern Design System (Library).

Step 3: Generating the Modern Stack#

The platform generates the React code, complete with TypeScript definitions and state management logic that mirrors the legacy behavior but follows modern best practices.

typescript
// Example: React component generated via Replay's reverse engineering
// Preserving complex legal tagging logic from a legacy Lotus Notes screen

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { TagSelector, DocumentPreview, AuditLog } from '@enterprise/legal-ui';

interface DiscoveryItemProps {
  documentId: string;
  initialTags: string[];
  securityLevel: 'Confidential' | 'Public' | 'Restricted';
}

export const LegalDiscoveryModule: React.FC<DiscoveryItemProps> = ({ 
  documentId, 
  initialTags,
  securityLevel 
}) => {
  const [tags, setTags] = useState<string[]>(initialTags);
  const [isLocked, setIsLocked] = useState<boolean>(false);

  // Business logic preserved from legacy 'OnEntry' events
  const handleTagChange = (newTags: string[]) => {
    if (securityLevel === 'Restricted' && !newTags.includes('Privileged')) {
      console.warn("Compliance Warning: Restricted docs require Privileged tag.");
      return;
    }
    setTags(newTags);
    // Auto-generated API contract call
    updateDocumentMetadata(documentId, { tags: newTags });
  };

  return (
    <div className="discovery-container">
      <DocumentPreview id={documentId} />
      <TagSelector 
        selected={tags} 
        onChange={handleTagChange} 
        readOnly={isLocked} 
      />
      <AuditLog documentId={documentId} action="UI_RENDER" />
    </div>
  );
};

Solving the "Logic Leak" in Legal Tech#

One of the biggest fears in reverse engineering legal systems is "logic leak"—the accidental omission of a critical compliance check or a subtle data validation rule. Lotus Notes often hides logic in "hidden fields" or "input translation formulas."

Replay’s Blueprints feature acts as a visual editor for the extracted logic. It allows architects to see exactly how data flows from the legacy UI to the backend. If a specific legal hold status triggers a notification to the General Counsel, that flow is captured and documented as an E2E test case automatically.

⚠️ Warning: Never assume a legacy field is "just a label." In Lotus Notes, labels often contain computed sub-logic that dictates document visibility. Visual reverse engineering captures these computed states in real-time.

Preserving API Contracts#

Modernizing the frontend is only half the battle. You also need to know how to talk to the data layer. Replay automatically generates API contracts by observing the network traffic during the recording phase. This ensures that your new React frontend integrates seamlessly with existing middleware or newly migrated microservices.

json
// Auto-generated API Contract for Legal Hold Service
{
  "endpoint": "/api/v1/legal-hold/status",
  "method": "POST",
  "payload_schema": {
    "case_id": "string",
    "custodian_id": "uuid",
    "hold_type": "enum[LITIGATION, REGULATORY, INTERNAL]",
    "effective_date": "ISO8601"
  },
  "required_headers": ["X-Compliance-Token", "Authorization"]
}

Why Regulated Industries Choose Visual Reverse Engineering#

In Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government, "moving fast and breaking things" isn't an option. The migration must be auditable, secure, and compliant.

1. •SOC2 and HIPAA-Ready: Replay is built for regulated environments. Whether you are handling PII in healthcare or sensitive litigation data in a law firm, the platform ensures data integrity.
2. •On-Premise Availability: For organizations that cannot send data to the cloud, Replay offers on-premise deployment, allowing you to perform reverse engineering within your own secure perimeter.
3. •Technical Debt Audit: Before you even start coding, Replay provides a comprehensive audit of your technical debt, identifying which parts of the legacy system are actually used and which can be retired.

💡 Pro Tip: Use the "Flows" feature in Replay to map out the entire user journey. Often, you'll find that 30% of your legacy Lotus Notes screens are never actually visited by users, allowing you to significantly reduce the scope of your migration.

The Future of the Enterprise Architect#

The role of the Enterprise Architect is shifting from a "documenter of the past" to a "builder of the future." By leveraging visual reverse engineering, we stop being historians and start being innovators.

Instead of spending two years on a "lift and shift" that provides zero new business value, Replay allows teams to move to a modern React stack in a fraction of the time. This frees up budget for AI integration, better UX, and faster feature delivery.

The 18-month rewrite is a relic of the past. The future is understanding what you already have, extracting its value, and deploying it on a modern stack with surgical precision.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does reverse engineering work without access to the original source code?#

Visual reverse engineering focuses on the "observed behavior" of the application. By capturing the DOM, network requests, and state transitions during a live user session, Replay can reconstruct the functional logic and UI structure without needing to parse legacy Lotus Script or proprietary

files.

Can Replay handle complex business logic hidden in legacy systems?#

Yes. By recording multiple variations of a workflow, Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies the conditional logic (e.g., "If User Role is Admin, show Delete button"). These insights are then presented in the Blueprints editor for architectural validation.

What is the typical time savings when using Replay?#

Our partners see an average of 70% time savings. A project that would typically take 12 months of manual analysis and coding can often be completed in 3 to 4 months using Replay’s automated extraction and component generation.

Does the generated React code follow our internal coding standards?#

Absolutely. Replay’s Library feature allows you to link your own Design System and coding templates. The generated components aren't "black box" code; they are clean, documented TypeScript files that look like your senior developers wrote them.

Is this suitable for highly secure legal environments?#

Yes. Replay is designed for the most stringent security requirements, offering SOC2 compliance and On-Premise installation options to ensure that sensitive legal data never leaves your controlled environment.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.