Clio Draft: Customise Word Templates

After you create your Clio Draft Word templates, you can customise them to your firm's specific practice area and needs using the Clio Draft Microsoft Word Template Builder Add-in. This streamlined workflow ensures document consistency and saves time when generating client-specific documents. In this article, you can access, modify, and successfully use your updated templates.

Access templates for customisation 

To update an existing template, you will need to open it using the Clio Draft Template Builder add-in inside Microsoft Word.

1. Open Microsoft Word on your computer and sign in to the Clio Draft add-in. 
2. In the Home ribbon, click Clio Draft Template Builder to open the add-in panel.
   • If prompted, sign in to the add-in using your Clio Draft credentials.
3. Click the three-line menu icon at the bottom of the add-in panel and select Templates to access the templates list. 
4. Select the template you want to update from the list. The template content will appear in the document. 

Customise the template content and fields 

Once the template is open in the Template Builder add-in, you can make changes to the document text and the merge fields in any order required for your template. 

For detailed instructions on creating and managing fields and cards within the add-in, see Clio Draft: Manage Cards and Fields in the Template Builder.

Step 1: Modify general text

• Directly edit any non-field-related text within your Microsoft Word document. This is the best practice for updating standardised language. 

Step 2: Delete or replace merge fields

For detailed instructions on how to show, hide, or replace the information in your document depending on available case information or answers to questions within the add-in, see Clio Draft: Add Conditional Logic to Word Templates. 

• Delete an existing field: To remove a merge field, select the entire field, including the curly brackets (e.g., {Client Name}), and press your keyboard's Delete key. 
• Replace text with a new field:
  1. Select the text in the Word document you want to replace.
  2. In the add-in panel, navigate to the relevant card and click the plus (+) icon next to the merge field you want to insert.
     • The field will replace the selected text. 

Step 3: Incorporate Clio Manage custom fields

You can include custom fields from Clio Manage, such as matter and contact fields, in your template. See Clio Draft: Draft and Manage Documents for more information. 

• Matter custom fields: Any matter custom fields created in Clio Manage automatically appear under the Clio Matter card in the Template Builder. 
• Contact custom fields: To pull in a contact custom field, create a new field on a Role card in the add-in with the same name used in Clio Manage. 

Step 4: Save the updated template.

• After completing your customization, click Save template in the add-in panel.
• The updated version will automatically replace the existing template file in your Clio Draft Library.

Use the updated template 

After saving your changes in the add-in, you can immediately use the customised template to generate a document in Clio Draft. 

1. Navigate to Clio Draft from the main navigation bar.
2. Click Draft from Template.
3. Select the matter and template.
4. Select the matter and client for the document. 
5. Select your newly updated template from the list of available templates.
6. Generate the document and click Draft Document.
   • The document will be generated using the latest version of your template, incorporating all customised text and fields you have added.