Activation
What Activation is.
Onit describes Activation as “a seamless upgrade of your existing SimpleLegal environment” to Unity (Onit’s Activation kit). Your administrators first get a sandbox, a copy of your SimpleLegal configuration, to explore and test Unity. On your scheduled Activation date, the system moves to Unity automatically.
Onit emails the dates to your administrative users. If you are unsure of your timeline, ask your Onit Customer Success Manager or Account Manager, or ask us.
Stays and changes
What stays, and what is new.
What stays
Onit says your matter management, eBilling, vendor collaboration and spend management “remain intact”. Your pricing stays the same.
What is new
Unity’s added features and functionality, including Spend Agent for AI invoice review, Ask Unity for conversational analytics, legal service requests, and CounselMatch for outside counsel search. Which ones you switch on is a design decision.
Law firms
Your law firms move to Counsel Exchange.
Onit handles the law firm side. Counsel Exchange brings CounselGO and BillingPoint together as Onit’s single portal for invoice submission and vendor activity, for OnitX, SimpleLegal and Unity customers. Onit contacted vendors on customers’ behalf, CounselGO and BillingPoint access ended in September 2026, and Onit supports the firms. Our CounselGO guide has the background.
The work
The work Activation does not do.
01
Design
Decide how matters, intake, approvals and reporting should work on Unity, and which new modules to switch on.
02
Data
Clean matter, vendor and invoice data so it is good to work with Onit’s AI.
03
Documents
Bring matter documents into a structure the platform and its AI can use.
04
Integrations
Check AP, single sign-on and every other connection against Unity, and adjust them.
05
Process changes
Update the processes and guidelines that change, and train your team on them.
Activation upgrades the system. This work is what turns the upgrade into better spend control and reporting.
From another system
Moving to Unity from another system.
SimpleLegal no longer takes new implementations, so new Onit customers implement Unity, either from scratch or by migrating from their current system. A migration covers the design, data, documents and integrations, and the process changes that come with a new platform.
If you are on Legal Tracker, our Legal Tracker vs Onit Unity page compares the two. Our guide to Onit Unity covers the platform.
One team
One team for the whole move.
01
Process and change
We handle the process changes, the change management, and the chance to improve how your department works while the platform changes.
02
Testing, documentation, training
We test the configuration, document it, and adapt the training to your team and your law firms.
03
Configuration done by us
We do the configuration ourselves, so there is no need to hire two different teams for the work.
04
Certified and backed by Onit
Our work is fully certified and backed by Onit.
How we help
How we help.
01
Before Activation
Review your SimpleLegal setup and test the Unity sandbox against how you actually work.
02
At Activation
Design what to switch on, clean the data, and adjust integrations and processes.
03
New to Unity
Implement Unity from scratch or migrate from your current system.
Who you work with
The practitioners who run the move.
Jonathan Gilman
Senior ELM / CLM / LSR Expert
Onit Level 4 certified, and joined Onit as employee number eleven. Specializes in ELM, CLM and legal spend reporting, with depth in complex data migrations and multi-system integrations.
Sam Lu
Senior Advisor, Legal Technology
Onit Level 4 certified. Has led ELM implementations for global enterprise legal departments across North America, with delivery across Onit, Mitratech and large-scale legacy migrations.
Frequently asked questions
Do SimpleLegal customers have to move to Onit Unity?
Onit is moving SimpleLegal customers to Unity through Activation, on a scheduled date that Onit emails to your administrators. Ask your Onit Customer Success Manager or Account Manager, or ask us, if you are unsure of your timeline.
Is Unity Activation a migration?
Onit describes it as a seamless upgrade of your existing SimpleLegal environment, with a sandbox copy of your configuration first and an automatic transition on the scheduled date. Getting value from Unity still takes design, data, integration and process work. Swiftwater, a certified Onit implementation partner, does that work with you: sandbox testing, data readiness for Onit’s AI, integrations, process changes and training.
Does our pricing change when SimpleLegal moves to Unity?
Your pricing stays the same, and you gain Unity’s added features and functionality. For details, contact us or your Onit contact.
What happens to our law firms and CounselGO?
Onit has moved law firms to Counsel Exchange, which brings CounselGO and BillingPoint together as one portal. CounselGO and BillingPoint access ended in September 2026, and Onit supports the firms.
How do we get our data ready for Onit’s AI?
Clean matter, vendor and invoice data, structure matter documents, and align your billing guidelines and approval rules before you switch on AI features such as Spend Agent. We do this as part of an Activation or migration project.
Getting ready for Unity? Talk to a practitioner.
Book a Discovery CallEnterprise legal management pages
Part of our enterprise legal management practice.
Also relevant: What Is SimpleLegal?, What Is Onit Unity?, CounselGO and Counsel Exchange, Legal Spend Management