Legal Aid US: Time and Expenses

Once you have set up your funding sources and grants and associated grants to matters, your Legal Aid organization can track time and expense activities to both grants and matters, track time and expense activities to only grants, and track Private Attorney Involvement (PAI) time.

Tip: Learn more about time entries in Clio Manage here and expenses here.

Add time entries

After adding a grant to a matter, you can begin adding time entries. Time entries can be tracked to both a grant and matter simultaneously, or to only a grant without associating it to a matter. A grant does not have to be added to a matter in order to select it for a time entry on the matter. If you select a grant that is not on the matter, it will be added to the matter but will not count toward reporting. You can change this by editing the grant on the matter.

Important: If you do not add a grant to an activity, the Grants column for the activity will be empty when viewing the Activities page. In your Personal Dashboard, you will also see a section for time not allocated to a grant.
Track time to grant and matter Track time to grant only
  1. Go to Activities and click New time entry, or select Time entry from the Create new button in the Clio Manage header on the top right.
  2. Under Matter, select the matter that the time entry will be associated with.
  3. Under Grant, select a grant. 
  4. Complete the remaining activity entry details.
  5. Click Save entry.

 

Add expenses

After adding a grant to a matter, you can begin adding expense entries. Expenses can be tracked to both a grant and matter simultaneously, or to only a grant without associating it to a matter. A grant does not have to be added to a matter in order to select it for an expense on the matter. If you select a grant that is not on the matter, it will be added to the matter but will not count toward reporting. You can change this by editing the grant on the matter.

Important: If you do not add a grant to an activity, the Grants column for the activity will be empty when viewing the Activities page.
Track expense to grant and matter Track expense to grant only
  1. Go to Activities and click New expense, or select Expense entry from the Create new button in the Clio Manage header on the top right.
  2. Under Matter, select the matter that the expense entry will be associated with.
  3. Under Grant, select a grant. 
  4. Complete the remaining activity entry details.
  5. Click Save entry.

 

Track PAI time

After adding a grant to a matter, you can track PAI involvement in a case when creating a time entry.

  1. Go to Activities and click New time entry, or select Time entry from the Create new button in the Clio Manage header on the top right.
  2. Under Grant, select a grant. 
  3. Check the box for PAI time.
  4. Complete the remaining time entry details.
  5. Click Save entry.

 

Edit grants on time entries in bulk

If you are an administrator on the account, you can change which grants are associated with specific time entries in bulk. You can only do this for time entries that have the same matter or for time entries where there is no matter. 

Note: You cannot edit grants on expense entries in bulk. If you need to change the grants on multiple expense entries, you will need to edit each expense entry individually. 

  1. Go to Activities and select the Time subtab.
  2. Check the box next to all the time entries that you want to update in bulk.
  3. At the top of the table, click Edit time entries.
  4. Select the grant that you want to update.
    • If you are not able to edit the grant, check that the selected time entries are all associated with the same matter. 
  5. Click Save.

 

Track time on behalf of volunteers with Clio for Co-Counsel

Clio for Co-Counsel allows you to work with individuals outside of your Clio account without assigning them a user license. Any external attorneys or volunteers that partner on your matters can use the portal to track their own time, view matters, share documents, and more. If you do not want your volunteers to track their own time or if they do not have access to Clio, you can track time on their behalf. 

Tip: You can remove a co-counsel user from a matter at any time. Learn more here.

  1. Create a contact for each volunteer. Learn more about creating contacts here.
    • Enter a unique email address for each volunteer contact.
    • If you are using Gmail or another email provider that allows plussing, create a single email account and then modify it for each volunteer. All emails sent to the plussed email addresses will go to the main email account, allowing you to use one email account for all volunteers. For example if lawfirm@gmail.com was your new email account for your volunteers and lawfirm+john@gmail.com and lawfirm+jane@gmail.com were email addresses for your volunteer contacts, emails sent to John and Jane would redirect to lawfirm@gmail.com.
  2. Create a placeholder matter to share with all volunteers. Learn more about creating matters here.
    • Under Permissions, select Everyone.
  3. Share the placeholder matter with your co-counsel volunteer contacts. Learn more about sharing matters via Clio for Co-Counsel here.
    • In the share modal, select all the volunteer contacts that you want to share the matter with. You do not need to check the box for Notify contacts via email since this is for a personalized message.
  4. If you created a primary email account and plussing email accounts for your volunteers, any emails sent to the volunteers' plussing email accounts will be sent to the primary email account that you created. Go to these emails and follow the directions to create co-counsel accounts for each of your volunteers.
    • Once each account is created, the volunteer contact will be added as a co-counsel user under the placeholder matter's Clio for Co-Counsel subtab.
  5. Create a new time entry to track time on behalf of a volunteer co-counsel user. 
    • Under Matter, select the placeholder matter.
    • Under Grant, select the appropriate grant.
    • Under Firm user, scroll down to the section where CO-COUNSEL USERS are listed, then find and select the volunteer co-counsel contact.

 

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