Services / Clio automation
Clio automation consultant for law firms.
Clio is where our deepest work is. We run five production Clio integrations today, all sharing one OAuth token chain we keep refreshed so they stay live instead of quietly breaking at 2am.
What it looks like
Matter creation
A new client turns into a fully populated Clio matter, contacts, custom fields, and all, without anyone keying it in twice.
Task templates
The right task set drops onto a matter as it moves, so nobody is rebuilding the same checklist by hand on every case. It is assigned through the matter rather than through the task template endpoints, which is the part that catches people out.
Custom fields
The fields your firm actually runs on get read and written by automation, not just filled in when someone remembers.
Intake to Clio
A lead from your form, your ads, or your CRM lands in Clio as a matter with the details attached, the moment it comes in.
Status milestones
When a matter hits a stage, the follow-on happens on its own: the client update goes out, the next task opens, the record updates.
Certified consultant, or automation consultant?
These are two different jobs and firms lose months by hiring the wrong one. Clio’s certified consultant program is about implementing Clio itself: migration, custom fields, permissions, templates, training, native workflows. If your Clio is set up badly, that is who fixes it, and no amount of custom code substitutes for it.
Automation consulting starts where the software stops. It is code running against the API on a schedule, doing work Clio has no screen for: reading a scanned notice and filing it to the right matter, pulling from a portal with no integration, deciding which of two similar contacts a document belongs to. A firm often wants both, and sometimes from different people. Ask any candidate which one they are, because plenty will answer both and mean the first.
What Clio's API will and will not do
Clio’s API is genuinely good, better than most legal software, and it still has edges that will surprise you mid-project. Two are worth knowing before you hire anyone.
Applying a task template list to a matter has no endpoint on the task template resource, which is where everyone looks first. It is done from the matter instead, as a nested attribute passed when you create or update the matter. Easy to miss, and the expensive mistake is concluding the feature is missing and building every task by hand.
The other is that Clio runs two different OAuth systems. The newer Platform API rotates the refresh token on every use and revokes the old one, so you must store the new token from each response. The older Manage API documents refresh tokens that do not expire. Know which one your integration is on, because sharing a single connection across several scheduled jobs is fragile either way, and we lost a chain to a token problem before hardening it. More on what the API reaches is in what a Clio automation consultant does, including the question to ask a vendor that sorts the real ones fast.
What it costs
The licences are your floor and they are the same whoever you hire. Clio Manage publishes four tiers on annual billing: EasyStart $49, Essentials $89, Advanced $119 and Expand $149 per user per month, with Clio Grow at $59 per user per month on top of the middle tiers and included in Expand. Advanced plus Grow is $178 per user per month, so that line alone moves about $2,100 a year with every hire.
Above the licences, automation agencies advertise roughly $75 to $200 an hour and $5,000 to $15,000 for a single production workflow. Treat those as advertised rates rather than facts, because this corner of the market publishes almost nothing.
We price on the result. Three things go into the agreement before anything is built: the number, the baseline it is measured against, and where the measurement comes from. The baseline comes from your own data over the weeks before we start, not from our estimate of it. Miss the number and there is no bill. What legal intake automation costs has the wage data if you want to size the manual version first.
How the work runs
The audit comes first and it is free: half an hour through your actual workflow, where the hours go, what winning them back is worth. You keep the write-up whether we build anything or not.
Design lands in about a week and a first system is usually live within a few weeks of starting. Anything touching a deadline runs in dry-run mode alongside your manual process first, logging what it would have done, and takes over only once those logs prove it right. Nothing deadline sensitive gets switched on because it demoed well.
Who answers when it breaks
Software rots. Clio ships changes, portals move, a form gets a new field. Every system we run logs each run and alerts loudly, and the alert goes to you as well as to us, by email and text. If only the vendor sees the failure, you are trusting the vendor to tell you they failed.
You hear from one of us the same business day, sooner when the thing that broke touches a deadline. Everything runs in your accounts, your Clio, your hosting, your database, billed to you, so nothing switches off if we part ways. Every system ships with a runbook covering what it does, how it fails and how to restart it, so a developer who has never met us can pick it up.
When not to hire us
If one person handles your intake comfortably alongside other work, automation will not pay for itself and the money is better spent getting more inquiries. If your process is still changing every month, wait until it settles, because encoding a workflow you are about to redesign is how firms end up with automation nobody trusts. And if what you actually need is Clio configured properly, hire a certified consultant for that first.
The specific Clio systems
Clio intake automation
New client to Clio matter, with nobody keying it in.
RingCentral to Clio call logging
Every client call logged to Clio, transcript included.
Clio duplicate contact cleanup
Clean up duplicate Clio contacts without losing a thing.
Clio to Google Sheets sync
Every Clio matter in a spreadsheet, fresh every morning.
GoHighLevel Clio integration
GoHighLevel and Clio, actually talking to each other.
Common questions
What does a Clio automation consultant do?
They build automation that runs against Clio's API on a schedule, so the repetitive work around your matters happens without a person driving each step: intake into matters, mail and documents filed to the right case, client updates at milestones, and reporting. It is a different job from configuring Clio, and firms often want both.
Is that the same as a Clio Certified Consultant?
No, and it is worth knowing the difference before you hire. Clio's certified consultant program is about implementing Clio itself: setup, migration, custom fields, permissions, training and native workflows. Automation consulting picks up where the software stops, in code that handles work Clio has no screen for. A certified consultant will get your Clio right. They will not usually write you a service that reads scanned mail at 6am.
What can you actually automate in Clio?
Matter creation with custom fields populated, intake from your forms or CRM landing as a matter, incoming mail and documents read and filed to the correct case, client updates fired on stage changes, task sets applied as a matter moves, and reporting pulled on a schedule. If it happens the same way every time, it is usually automatable.
What will Clio's API not do?
More than vendors admit, and the surprises are usually about where a thing lives rather than whether it exists. Applying a task template list has no endpoint on the task template resource, for instance; it is a nested attribute on the matter, so you assign a list by creating or updating the matter. Token handling is the other one: Clio runs two different OAuth systems with different refresh behaviour, and sharing one connection across several jobs is fragile if you have not built for it.
What does Clio automation cost?
The licences are your floor and are the same whoever you hire: Clio Manage publishes EasyStart $49, Essentials $89, Advanced $119 and Expand $149 per user per month on annual billing, with Clio Grow at $59 per user per month on top of the middle tiers. Above that, automation agencies advertise roughly $75 to $200 an hour. We price on the result instead, agreed and written into the agreement before anything is built.
Do we have to change how we use Clio?
No. Everything is built through the API, so your Clio stays exactly as it is and your team keeps working the way they already do. Nothing moves to a system they would have to relearn, and the custom work is yours to keep.
How long does it take?
A first system is usually live within a few weeks: about a week to audit and map the work, a week to design it, then build and deploy. Anything touching a deadline runs in dry-run mode alongside your manual process first, and takes over only once the logs prove it right.
What happens when something breaks?
The alert goes to you as well as to us, by email and text, and you hear from one of us the same business day, sooner when the failure touches a deadline. Everything runs in your own accounts, so nothing switches off if we part ways, and every system ships with a runbook a developer who has never met us can pick up.
Runs on Clio? Let’s talk.
Book a free audit and we’ll walk your Clio setup and tell you what’s worth automating first. Or see the full picture of what we automate.