Clio Draft: Add Conditional Logic to Word Templates

Using the Clio Draft Template Builder add-in, you can add conditions to your template that controls what information or sections of text to show, remove, or replace in your document. You can create two types of conditions: standalone and triggered. 

• With standalone conditions, you create a question in your Clio for Word template with multiple answers. The answer the document drafter chooses when creating their draft controls which text is included or excluded in the draft.
• Triggered conditions activate automatically depending on information related to specific fields added from your cards into your template.

This article covers the third of four steps in building Word document templates via the Clio Draft Template Builder. Before adding conditions, first create a Word document template or open one for editing. Then, since triggered conditions rely on fields in cards, make sure to add any needed cards and fields before continuing with adding conditions.

Create standalone conditions

You can create a standalone condition when you want the document drafter to choose between options that determine what language appears in the final document. For example, if you want a divorce document to include the relevant reason for the divorce, you may create a standalone condition with the question "What is the ground for divorce?" and options of "Irreconcilable differences" and "Separation".

1. Open your Word document and the add-in.
2. Select the Conditions tab and then click Create condition or New condition.
3. Under Is this condition triggered by one of the inserted fields?, select No.
4. Under Question, enter the question the document drafter will answer (e.g., What is the ground for divorce?)
5. Under Choices, enter the choices related to the question.
6. Optional: Enter a hint if the question is complicated.
7. Click Create condition.

Once your condition is created, you can apply the condition to specific text in your document.

Create triggered conditions

Triggered conditions depend on fields in your template. For example, if you want to add a contact's address into a document (when available), you can create a triggered condition such that, if the address information is available, the drafted document may state: "The defendant, residing at [address] has stated that...". However, if the contact's address information is not available, you may only want to state "The defendant has stated that...". The text "residing at [address]" therefore depends on (or is conditional upon) whether the address field contains an address.

1. Open your Word document and the add-in.
2. Select the Conditions tab and then click Create condition or New condition.
3. Under Is this condition triggered by one of the inserted fields?, select Yes. 
4. Under the If field, select the card and the triggering field. 
5. Under the Condition field, select the trigger type (e.g., Equals, Does not equal, Exists, Is greater than).

6. If required by the trigger type, enter the Conditional value (case sensitive).

   Tip: You can create compound conditions (e.g., IF Field A EQUALS X AND IF Field B EXISTS) by clicking + AND / OR.
7. Click Create condition.

Once your condition is created, you can apply the condition to specific text in your document.

Apply a condition to your document

Once you have created your conditions, you can use them to specify how your document should be drafted depending on the choice you select for standalone conditions or the field information for triggered conditions.

For example, continuing with the previous example of creating a standalone condition for reasons for divorce, you may want a document to include the text "The parties have experienced an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage due to irreconcilable differences" or "The parties mutually consent to the dissolution of the marriage", depending on option a user selects when they draft new divorce documents from the template. In this case, you will add these texts into the document and then apply each condition to the relevant text.

1. Select the text in your document template where you want to insert a condition.
2. In the add-in, find the condition you want to insert and then click Apply.

The text will be sandwiched between "[If]" and "[End]" condition tags. Everything between these tags will be inserted if the condition is met.

Use advanced conditions

After you create basic conditions, you can combine them into compound or nested logic, allowing your templates to handle multiple criteria simultaneously.

Create compound conditions (Using AND/OR)

A compound condition tells Clio Draft to insert text only when multiple criteria are met. You can add these conditions using the + AND / OR button during the condition creation step.

Insert nested conditions

Nesting involves placing one conditional block inside another conditional block. The inner condition is only considered if the outer condition is true.

You can use this for documents with complex clauses where a section of the document appears based on a primary factor (e.g., does the client have a spouse?), and then sub-clauses within that section appear based on secondary factors (e.g., do we have the spouse's occupation?).

For example:

1. Outer condition: Create a condition IF Spouse Full Name EXISTS.
2. Inner condition: Create a condition IF Spouse Occupation EXISTS.
3. Apply outer condition: Apply your outer condition to the text that you want to appear in the document if the spouse exists. The text will appear wrapped in this condition.
4. Apply inner condition: Apply this inner condition within a portion of the text that is wrapped in the outer condition.

The spouse's occupation sentence will only appear if the client has a spouse AND the occupation field is filled out.

Next steps

Now that your template has been created, and you added cards, fields conditional logic, you can save the template and learn how to use it to create documents for specific scenarios quickly and consistently:

• Clio Draft: Save and Use Word Templates
• Clio Draft: Draft and Manage Documents