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One of the last steps of completing a personal injury case is calculating your client's proposed settlement amount after expenses, liens and outstanding balances, and legal fees. With Clio's Personal Injury Add-On, you can add awarded recovery amounts, your legal fees, and other liens and outstanding balances and use the calculator to determine the net settlement amount for your client, allowing you to make quick and informed decisions during settlement negotiations.

Note: This feature is a component of Clio's Personal Injury Add-On and is not available for all Clio subscription plans. See which plans have Clio's Personal Injury Add-On here. Contact Clio's support or sales teams here if you have questions about upgrading.

Add, edit, and delete recovery amounts

Once your client's case reaches settlement, you can add new recoveries or amounts won in the Recovery amounts table and use the calculator in the Recovery summary to calculate your client's net compensation. The calculator shows all recoveries subtracted by your recorded legal fees, matter expenses, and liens and outstanding balances. When adding a new recovery, you can add your default contingency legal fee that you set for the matter or add a different legal fee after saving the recovery. You can also edit and delete recoveries. 

Tip: The timestamp in the Recovery summary shows when the calculator was last refreshed. 

Add Edit Delete
  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. Click New recovery.
  3. Under Source, select the opposing party or defendant contact.
    • If the contact does not exist in your account yet, click New contact to create a new contact.
  4. Under Amount, enter the settlement or awarded amount. 
  5. If the matter's billing method is set to contingency fee, a box for Add default contingency legal fee will be visible and checked by default. Uncheck this box if you do not want to add your default legal fee at the same time as the recovery or if you need to add multiple contingency fees for a single recovery.
    • If you uncheck this box, the added recovery will not have an attached legal fee. You will need to add a new legal fee after saving the recovery to ensure that the net client compensation is accurate.
  6. Click Save recovery. 

 

Add, edit, and delete legal fees

When adding a new recovery, enter the default contingency fee if the billing method for the matter is set to contingency. You can also add legal fees after saving the recovery amount if you need to change the default fee or if you have a co-counsel on the matter and need to add multiple legal fees.

Note: By default, legal fees are deducted from the total recovery before expenses. You can retain this setting or deduct legal fees after expenses. Learn more about changing the settings in the header below Change order of settlement deductions. 

Add Edit Delete
  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. In the Legal fees table, click New legal fee.
  3. Under Fee source, select the recovery associated with this legal fee.
  4. Under Fee recipient, select the firm user who will receive the fee.
  5. Under Rate, enter your legal fee rate.
  6. Optional: Under Discount, enter discounts if applicable.
  7. Optional: Click Add referral fee to add a referral fee recipient and rate. Learn more about adding a referral fee here. 
  8. Click Save fee.

 

Add, edit, and delete referral fees

After adding recoveries and legal fees, you can enter any fees owing to outside parties, like co-counsel or referral fee. When recording a legal fee to add a referral fee, select a recipient from your contacts and enter the rate. Referral fees are deducted from the legal fees and appear on the settlement statement.

Add Edit Delete
  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. Scroll down to the Legal fees table and find the legal fee associated with the referral.
  3. Under the Actions column, click the pencil (edit) icon.
  4. In the modal, click Add referral fee.
  5. Under Referral fee recipient, select a contact from the dropdown and enter the referral fee rate.
  6. Optional: Add any additional co-counsel or referral recipients. Referral rates cannot exceed firm-user rates.
  7. Click Save fee.

 

Change order of settlement deductions

By default, legal fees are deducted from the total recovery before any matter expenses for calculating your client's net compensation. If your firm deducts expenses before legal fees, you can change the deduction order by editing the matter.

Tip: If you use one method of determining settlement deductions across multiple matters, you can create similar matters faster by selecting that method (and entering additional preset information) on a matter template. Learn more about matter templates here.

  1. Go to the matter's Dashboard and select Edit matter. If viewing the matter's Settlement subtab, click Edit matter in the top right.
  2. Scroll down to Personal injury preferences.
  3. Under Order of settlement deductions, select one of the two options:
    • Deduct legal fees first, then expenses: This is the default setting. Your client's net compensation will be calculated as follows: Total recovery - Legal fees - Matter expenses - Liens & outstanding balances = Net client compensation.
    • Deduct expenses first, then legal fees: Your client's net compensation will be calculated as follows: Total recovery - Matter expenses - Legal fees - Liens & outstanding balances = Net client compensation.
  4. Click Save matter to finish.

 

View and adjust matter expenses

When creating new expense entries from the matter's Activities subtab, the expenses are automatically generated in the expenses table of the Settlement subtab and automatically subtracted from the total recovery to inform your client's net compensation. Each expense is grouped by expense category and is a sum of all expenses in that expense category. 

  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. Scroll down to the Matter expenses table to view the matter's expenses by expense category.
  3. If you need to change the expenses, go to the matter's Activities subtab and edit the expenses. Learn more about expenses here.

 

Add, edit, and delete non-medical liens

Note: Medical liens are added in the matter’s Medical Records tab.

If your client has other liens, you can track them as part of your settlement calculations. The settlement calculator will automatically subtract the amounts and adjust your client's net compensation. You can also edit and delete any liens directly from the table. 

Add Edit Delete
  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. Scroll down to the Other liens table. 
  3. Click New lien.
  4. Under Lien holder, select the contact that your client owes.
    • If the contact does not exist in your account yet, click New contact to create a new contact.
  5. Under Description, enter a description of the lien or outstanding balance.
  6. Under Amount, enter the amount owed.
  7. Optional: Under Reduction, enter any negotiated reductions in the original lien amount as an absolute amount or percentage.
  8. Click Save lien. 

 

Add, edit, and delete outstanding balances

If your client has other outstanding balances, such as personal loans, you can track them as part of your settlement calculations. By default these balances are marked as the client's responsibility You can also edit and delete any liens directly from the table. 

Add Edit Delete
  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. Scroll down to the Outstanding balances table. 
  3. Click New outstanding balance.
  4. Select the relevant radio button to indicate if the client or lawyer will be responsible for the outstanding balance.
  5. Under Balance holder, select the contact that your client owes.
    • If the contact does not exist in your account yet, click New contact to create a new contact.
  6. Optional: Under Description, enter a description of the outstanding balance.
  7. Under Balance owing, enter the amount owed.
  8. Optional: Under Reduction, enter any negotiated reductions in the outstanding balance amount as an absolute amount or percentage.
  9. Click Save outstanding balance. 

 

Export settlement data

Once you have entered all relevant settlement details for your client's matter, you can export the data to help you prepare your client's settlement sheet and get their signature. The CSV file will show all data in the Settlement tab, including the information from the Recovery summary and settlement calculator.

Tip: You can also use the settlement statement generator to automatically generate a settlement statement directly in Clio Manage. Learn more below.

  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. In the top right corner, click Export.
    • The exported data will be downloaded in CSV format to your computer, allowing you to manipulate the file in a spreadsheet software like Excel. 

 

Generate settlement statements

Once you enter all relevant settlement details for a matter, including at least one recovery amount, you can generate a settlement statement with your firm's logo and letterhead. After generating the statement, you can download it to your computer as a PDF or Word document, save it to Clio Documents, and send for electronic signature.

Tip: Learn how to Get Started with eSignatures.

  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. In the top right corner, click Create settlement statement to preview the settlement statement.
  3. Optional: To send the settlement statement for e-signature, click Prepare for e-sign. Refer to Prepare settlement statements for e-signature below to learn how to send the settlement statements for e-signing.
  4. Optional: Click Download and choose either Download PDF file to computer, Save PDF file to Clio Documents, or Download .docx file to computer to save the file according to your needs.

 

Prepare settlement statements for e-signature

After creating a settlement statement, you can send it to your client for their electronic signature using Dropbox Sign. You can also resend the settlement statement.

  1. Go to the matter and select the Settlement subtab.
  2. In the top right corner, click Create settlement statement.
  3. Click Prepare for e-sign.
    • If you have already sent a settlement statement, click Yes, and prepare for e-signing in the pop-up modal to send another one.
  4. The modal automatically includes the client's name and email. Depending on your signature limit, you can add more contacts and/or firm users.
  5. Click Prepare for e-signing, and the settlement statement will open in Dropbox Sign.
  6. Add relevant fillable fields to the document.
    1. Select the signer, then drag the Signature field to the relevant signing location in the document.
    2. Drag the date field to the relevant date locations in the document and select the assignee(s).

    Note: If you are the firm member responsible for signing the document, you can select yourself, and sign the doc before sending.

  7. Click Next.
  8. Optional: Modify the email by changing the title, adding a message, and/or adding additional recipients.
  9. Click Send for signature.

Note: Once the settlement statement has been sent, the document will be added to the matter's documents. A Pending e-Sign status tag will be applied to the document to indicate that the signature is pending. Once signed, the status tag will be removed from the original document, and the signed copy of the document will be added to the matter's documents.

 

Set custom statement of acknowledgement for settlement statements

When you generate a settlement statement, it will contain a statement of acknowledgement for your client to read and acknowledge before signing the statement. You can create this acknowledgment statement in your settings and have it automatically apply to all generated settlement statements.

  1. Go to Settings > Personal Injury Add-on.
  2. In the Settlement subtab, go down to Statement of acknowledgment.
  3. Enter your custom statement and then click Update settings.
    • The acknowledgment statement can be up to 500 characters. 

 

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