The question behind the question

When a firm asks “what happens to our licences,” they are usually asking one of four different things:

• Does our software stop working?
• Can we renew, and for how long?
• Do we get anything back for what we’ve already paid?
• Are we allowed to keep using it after support ends?

Those have different answers, and one of them is not the answer anybody wants. Taken in order.

1. Does the software stop working?

Every indication from the channel is that this is an end of support, not a remote shutdown. Nothing we have seen describes a licence server going dark, a kill switch, or a date on which clients stop authenticating.

What we have not seen is anyone stating that as policy, in writing, from the vendor. We are inferring it from how these retirements normally work and from the absence of any warning to the contrary.

2. Can we renew, and for how long?

Channel partners report that existing agreements can be renewed one final time during 2026, with those renewals running through to end of life at the end of 2027.

Two things to check on your own agreement, today

3. Do we get anything back?

Dragon Legal Anywhere is a subscription. You have been buying access for a term, not acquiring an asset. When the term ends, that is the transaction complete. There is no residual value, no perpetual fallback licence, and no conversion right that we are aware of.

This is worth saying plainly because it is the difference between the subscription and perpetual models, and it is a difference a lot of firms did not think hard about when they signed. With a desktop product you own something — a version — and end of support means you keep running what you own, unsupported. With a subscription, when the subscription ends, so does the arrangement.

We have seen no announcement of a migration programme, credit, or transition offer for existing customers. That does not mean one won’t appear — vendors often produce something for a large installed base — but nothing has been published, and building a plan around an unannounced concession is not a plan.

4. Are we allowed to keep using it?

Nothing about end of support typically revokes your right to use software during a term you have paid for. If your agreement runs to the end of 2027, it runs to the end of 2027.

The question is not permission. It is whether running unmaintained software against privileged client material is a position your firm wants to be in — with no security patches, no fixes, and no support line when something breaks in the middle of a filing week.

That is a professional-responsibility judgement rather than a licensing one, and we cover the considerations — malpractice carriers, outside-counsel guidelines, and technology-competence expectations — on the end-of-life dates page.

What we genuinely don’t know

• Whether service availability is guaranteed past end of life. Nobody has said either way. This is the biggest open question for a cloud product and the one we would push hardest on.
• Whether the final-renewal window is uniform. Terms vary by region, reseller, and agreement type.
• Whether any transition offer will appear. None announced.
• Whether multi-year agreements extending past 2027 are honoured, shortened, or renegotiated. We have seen nothing addressing this, and it affects a meaningful number of firms.
• Whether these dates are final. No vendor announcement exists.

This page is dated and will be updated as those resolve.

The one thing worth doing

Everything else follows from it. A firm renewing in March 2026 has a very different decision from one renewing in November 2027, and most firms we speak to do not know which they are without looking.

It is a five-minute task with a fourteen-month consequence.

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