Migrate local user account to network account If I have a user with a local profile on their mac and they want to migrate all the data to a network based account (OS X Lion server), what's the best way to do this?
Why wouldn't you use the Migration Assistant to move users?

It's wicked fast over gigabit ethernet, knows what preference files are needed and can handle special cases better than rsync or other simple file copy methods.

Once the user is there, you can delete it (preserving the home folder) and then re-create the user with the proper server UID / home folder location or just edit these in the directory service where user data is stored.

It really depends more on how you want your server set up than just getting the files. Some setups it's easier to move first and fix later - others you should just set up the new account and let users move their files by hand once they have logged into their new accounts.

I would probably set up the server account for the user and once you have created the Home records in Workgroup Manager you can copy the files from a backup or the old client machine (paying attention to ownership by moving the contents of the home folder directories and resetting permissions to match the server UID/GID) before binding the client machine to the server accounts.