Visual Extraction for Legacy LegalTech: Modernizing Case Management Systems

Your legacy Case Management System (CMS) is a black box holding your firm hostage. While your competitors iterate on AI-driven discovery and automated filing, your engineering team is paralyzed by a monolithic LegalTech stack where the original architects left a decade ago and the documentation is a collection of outdated Word docs—if it exists at all.

The $3.6 trillion global technical debt isn't just a number; it’s the reason your last attempt to modernize the intake module was scrapped after six months of "discovery." In LegalTech, where precision is non-negotiable and regulatory compliance is the baseline, the traditional "Big Bang" rewrite is a death sentence. Statistics show that 70% of legacy rewrites fail or significantly exceed their timelines. When you're dealing with sensitive litigation data and HIPAA-regulated health records, you cannot afford a 24-month "dark period" where no new value is delivered.

The future of modernization isn't digging through 20-year-old COBOL or Delphi code—it’s visual extraction legacy workflows. By treating the user interface as the ultimate source of truth, we can bypass the "archaeology" phase and move straight to a modern, documented React architecture.

TL;DR: Visual extraction allows Enterprise Architects to bypass manual code audits by recording real user workflows and automatically generating documented React components, reducing modernization timelines from years to weeks.

The LegalTech Modernization Trap#

Most LegalTech firms fall into the "Documentation Gap." Our data shows that 67% of legacy systems lack any meaningful technical documentation. In a complex case management environment—where a single screen might trigger fifteen different database calls, three validation rules, and an automated court filing—manual reverse engineering is a recipe for disaster.

The industry standard for manual screen migration is roughly 40 hours per screen. For a comprehensive CMS with 200+ screens, that’s 8,000 engineering hours just to reach parity. By using Replay, that timeline drops to 4 hours per screen. We aren't just talking about aesthetic updates; we are talking about extracting the latent business logic that has been buried under layers of technical debt.

Why Manual Reverse Engineering Fails in LegalTech#

1. •Hidden Logic: Business rules are often hardcoded into UI event handlers (e.g., "if state is NY and case type is Tort, show field X").
2. •Data Silos: Legacy systems often lack clear API contracts, making it impossible to know what the frontend is actually sending to the backend.
3. •Risk of Regression: Without E2E tests for the legacy system, you won't know you've broken a critical filing workflow until a lawyer misses a deadline.

Visual Extraction: The New Source of Truth#

Visual extraction legacy modernization flips the script. Instead of reading the code to understand the behavior, we record the behavior to generate the code.

When a paralegal navigates a "New Case Intake" flow, Replay captures every state change, API call, and UI transition. This "Video as Source of Truth" approach ensures that the modernized version isn't just a guess—it's a functional clone of the verified business process, upgraded to a modern tech stack.

From Black Box to Documented React Components#

The output of visual extraction isn't just a screenshot; it's high-quality, typed React code. This allows your team to move from a legacy monolith to a modern Design System (Library) and micro-frontend architecture in a fraction of the time.

typescript
// Example: Generated component from Replay visual extraction
// Legacy: CaseManagement_v2_Final_OLD.asp
// Modernized: CaseIntakeForm.tsx

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { Button, TextField, Select, Alert } from '@/components/ui';
import { validateLegalJurisdiction } from '@/utils/compliance';

interface CaseData {
  caseId: string;
  jurisdiction: 'NY' | 'CA' | 'TX';
  filingType: string;
  isUrgent: boolean;
}

export function CaseIntakeForm({ initialId }: { initialId: string }) {
  const [data, setData] = useState<CaseData | null>(null);
  const [error, setError] = useState<string | null>(null);

  // Replay extracted the exact API endpoint and payload structure
  const handleSubmission = async (payload: CaseData) => {
    if (!validateLegalJurisdiction(payload.jurisdiction)) {
      setError("Invalid jurisdiction for selected filing type.");
      return;
    }
    await fetch('/api/v1/cases/submit', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: JSON.stringify(payload),
    });
  };

  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-slate-50 rounded-lg border border-slate-200">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold mb-4">Case Intake: {initialId}</h2>
      {error && <Alert variant="destructive">{error}</Alert>}
      <form onSubmit={(e) => { e.preventDefault(); /* ... */ }}>
        <TextField label="Case ID" value={data?.caseId} disabled />
        <Select 
          label="Jurisdiction" 
          options={['NY', 'CA', 'TX']} 
          onChange={(val) => setData({...data, jurisdiction: val})} 
        />
        {/* Business logic preserved: Urgent flag only shows for NY/CA */}
        {(data?.jurisdiction === 'NY' || data?.jurisdiction === 'CA') && (
          <div className="mt-4 p-2 bg-yellow-100 rounded">
            <label>Mark as Urgent Filing?</label>
            <input type="checkbox" />
          </div>
        )}
        <Button type="submit" className="mt-6">Submit to Court Portal</Button>
      </form>
    </div>
  );
}

💰 ROI Insight: A Tier-1 Insurance provider used Replay to extract 150 screens of a legacy claims processing system. They reduced their modernization budget from $4.2M to $1.1M and hit production in 4 months instead of the projected 18.

The 4-Step Visual Extraction Framework#

Modernizing a LegalTech system requires a surgical approach. You cannot simply "lift and shift" outdated UX patterns, but you must preserve the underlying legal logic.

Step 1: Workflow Recording#

Identify your most critical "happy paths." For a CMS, this is usually Case Creation, Document Filing, and Billing. Using Replay, a subject matter expert (SME) or QA engineer records themselves performing these tasks in the legacy environment. This creates a "Blueprint" of the application's actual behavior, not its theoretical design.

Step 2: Automated Component Extraction#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite analyzes the recording. It identifies UI patterns—tables, modals, input fields—and maps them to your modern Design System. If you don't have a Design System yet, Replay generates a "Library" of reusable React components based on the legacy UI's atomic elements.

Step 3: API Contract Generation#

One of the biggest hurdles in visual extraction legacy projects is the backend. Replay monitors the network traffic during the recording to generate precise API contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger). This allows your backend team to build modern microservices that are guaranteed to support the frontend's data requirements.

yaml
# Generated API Contract from Replay Recording
openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: Legacy CMS Case API
  version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /api/v1/cases/submit:
    post:
      summary: Extracted intake submission endpoint
      requestBody:
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              type: object
              properties:
                caseId: {type: string}
                jurisdiction: {type: string, enum: [NY, CA, TX]}
                isUrgent: {type: boolean}
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful submission

Step 4: E2E Test Parity#

Before turning off the legacy system, you must prove the new system works identically. Replay generates Playwright or Cypress E2E tests based on the original recording. You run these against the new React build. If the tests pass, you have mathematically proven functional parity.

⚠️ Warning: Never attempt a legacy migration without automated parity testing. Manual QA cannot catch the edge cases buried in 20 years of "temporary" code fixes.

Handling Regulated Environments: SOC2 and HIPAA#

LegalTech is a high-stakes environment. You aren't just managing data; you're managing privilege and chain of custody. Most "AI" tools are non-starters because they require sending sensitive data to the cloud.

Replay is built for these constraints. With On-Premise availability and SOC2/HIPAA-ready infrastructure, the visual extraction process happens within your secure perimeter. Sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information) can be masked during the recording phase, ensuring that the generated code and documentation contain no client data, only the structural logic of the application.

The Technical Debt Audit#

Before you write a single line of new code, Replay provides a Technical Debt Audit. This report identifies:

• •Dead Screens: Features that are in the code but never used in real user workflows.
• •Redundant Logic: Duplicate validation rules across different modules.
• •Security Vulnerabilities: Legacy endpoints that lack modern authentication headers.

Why "Understand First, Code Later" is the Only Way Forward#

The "Big Bang" rewrite fails because it assumes you can understand a system by reading its code. But code is often a lie. It's a collection of patches, workarounds, and "todo" comments that were never addressed.

The user interface is the only place where the system's intent meets its reality. By using visual extraction legacy techniques, you are capturing the reality of how your firm operates.

• •Preserve Business Logic: Don't lose the complex fee-calculation logic just because it was written in a stored procedure in 2004.
• •Accelerate Onboarding: New developers can look at a Replay "Flow" and see exactly how a feature works without needing a 2-hour walkthrough from a senior dev.
• •Eliminate Archaeology: Stop paying $200/hr for consultants to "study" your legacy codebase.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Replay's "Flows" feature to create a living map of your architecture. As you extract screens, the platform builds a visual graph of how data moves through your system.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take?#

While a manual rewrite takes 18-24 months, a Replay-driven visual extraction typically takes 2-8 weeks for a standard enterprise module. The time savings come from automating the documentation and component-writing phases, which usually consume 70% of a developer's time.

What about business logic preservation?#

Replay doesn't just copy the "look" of the screen. It captures the state transitions and network calls. If a field only appears when a specific checkbox is clicked, Replay identifies that logic and includes it in the generated React component.

Does this work with older technologies like Mainframes or Citrix?#

Yes. Because Replay uses visual reverse engineering, it is agnostic to the underlying tech stack. Whether your legacy system is a Java Applet, a VB6 desktop app, or a Green Screen mainframe, if a user can interact with it on a screen, Replay can extract the workflow.

How does this affect our existing CI/CD pipeline?#

The React components and API contracts generated by Replay are standard-compliant. They can be checked into your Git repository (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket) and integrated into your existing build processes immediately.

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