Clio Draft: Draft and Manage Documents

Drafting legal documents is a key component of Clio Draft. With the Clio Manage and Clio Draft integration, you can easily draft legal documents by populating your Clio Manage client and matter data. Once the documents are drafted and pre-filled with client and matter data, you can send documents out for electronic signatures. Learn more about Clio Draft eSignatures here.

Tip: Before drafting legal documents, use the form template feature to create court forms with pre-filled information, making it easier to populate client and matter data when drafting your documents. Learn more about form templates here and Word templates here

Draft new documents

You can draft new legal documents from court forms, form templates, Word templates, or from your pre-created sets. Form templates have pre-filled information that automatically populates when drafting documents. Sets are groups of court forms, form templates, and/or Word templates you compiled that you want to use again for your clients. You can begin draft documents in either Clio Draft or Clio Manage.

When drafting documents, you will come across three distinct sections in the workflow—project preparation, the populate page, and the drafting/preview screen:

  • Project preparation: This is where you will find and select all the court forms, form templates, and/or Word templates that you want to draft for your matter. You can add up to 20 forms and templates to the same project, add forms and templates from existing sets, or draft individual forms or templates. 
  • Populate page: This page contains the repetitive fields from your selected court forms and all of the fields inserted into any Word templates in the project. As you add information to the populate page, your selected matter will store that information and apply it to future documents that you draft for the matter.
  • Drafting/preview screen: For court forms, this is where you can type directly on your selected court forms to finalize any sections that are not redundant across the forms in your set. The information you entered on the populate page will also be visible across relevant fields in the forms.
    If you are drafting Word documents, you can preview those documents to ensure the draft was successful. All fields in your Word templates will retain their yellow highlighting for your quick review. Toggle highlighting off when your review is complete. You can also send the drafted documents and court forms out for electronic signatures.
Via Clio Draft
  1. Go to Library and select one of the Sets, Court forms, Form templates, or Word templates subtabs. 
  2. Find the forms and templates that you need. You can use the search bar on each tab to search by form number or form or template title. 
  3. Optional: To preview a form or template, click the Actions dropdown and then select Preview.
  4. Click Add to add a form or template to your project. The forms will appear in the selection pane on the right side of the screen. You can add up to 20 forms and/or templates to the project.
  5. Optional: In the selection pane, click the trash can icon next to items that you do not want to draft. You can also reorganize the order by clicking and dragging items.
  6. In the same selection pane, click Draft new documents.
  7. Enter a specific title and choose a matter, and then click Next.
    • When choosing a document title, be as specific as possible to make it easier to track drafted documents. We recommend using the client’s name and the practice area/case type as part of your naming conventions, e.g., Smith - Divorce - Preliminary Pleadings.
    • When selecting a matter, you can choose an existing Clio Manage matter or create a new matter. If you do not see your Clio Manage matters, you will need to integrate Clio Manage and Clio Draft and run a sync. Learn more here.
  8. On the populate page, start adding case-specific information in the fillable fields. You do not need to complete every field.
    • The menu on the left shows the types of cards or categories that the forms are asking for. As you complete required fields, each card title will show a green checkmark and the card itself will show a Completed pill to indicate that a specific card is complete.
    • Each card has information specific to that card, including fields from the forms. Click the arrow next to each card to view the required fields and the number of times that a specific field appears in the documents in the project.
    • If a card requires a contact, when you select a contact, the card will automatically populate with the rest of the information that is available on that Clio Manage contact’s card. If you do not have an existing contact to select, select the Attach contact field, and then click New Contact to add this contact to your Clio Draft contacts list. Contacts added in Clio Draft will not be synced back into the matter in Clio Manage.
    • As you enter information in the fields, the data will populate everywhere in the selected court forms and templates wherever there is a match. For example, if you enter a client’s name on this screen, the client’s name will automatically fill every spot in the forms and templates where they are asking for the client’s name.
  9. Once you are finished, click Generate document(s). If you are drafting court forms, you will now be able to edit directly on the documents. If you are drafting Word documents, you can preview the document and toggle highlighting off to remove field highlights.
  10. On the drafting/preview screen, click each court form in the project to make edits and changes directly on the documents. 
    • For court forms, the data you entered in the populate page will automatically be populated in the appropriate fields in a blue font color for visual aid. When you download the forms, the text will be black.
    • If you manually edit a field that came from the populate page, the field will disconnect from the populate page and turn grey. This means that if you go back to the populate page, edit the same field, and then generate the documents again, the information you entered in the populate field will populate in every field where there is a match except the greyed out field. If you do not want to make this update, click Reset to initial value on the right side of the field. 
    • As you type text into single-line blue fields, the text will automatically shrink as you reach the edges of the text box, allowing you to fit more text into small spaces. Text in multi-line fields will not automatically shrink.
    • If you need additional text boxes or more space, click Add custom field from the edit banner, click on the document where you want to add the text, and then start entering your text. You can also click the box to move it, change the text size, or delete the box. 
  11. Optional: If you need to create copies of any of the forms or templates in your project, hover over the form or templates title in the Documents panel and click Duplicate. Enter the number of copies you want to create and then click Duplicate.
    • Once the copies are created, they become their own originals, which means that any changes made to one will not appear on the other. 
  12. Optional: If you need to add more forms, click Add documents, choose your forms from your library, and then click Confirm.
    • Once you add more forms, you will be taken to the populate page where you can add information for those new forms in case you have new fields that were not in the initial set of forms. 
    • This feature is helpful if you started a case and may not have known all the forms you needed. 
  13. When your project is finished, you have the following options:
    • Click Save to Clio to save all of the documents in your project back to the matter in Clio Manage.
    • Click Download to download a PDF/.docx of each individual document or a zip file of all the document.
    • Click Esign to proceed through the electronic signature tool that is built into Clio Draft. Learn more about eSignatures here.
Via Clio Manage
  1. In Clio Manage, go to a matter’s Documents subtab.
  2. Click New and then select Create document in Clio Draft.
  3. In the popup, click Continue to Clio Draft
    • This will also sync this matter from Clio Manage to Clio Draft. If the matter was previously synced, this action will update any changes made to fields and contacts.
  4. Select one of the Sets, Court forms, Form templates, or Word templates  subtabs.
  5. Find the forms and templates that you need. You can use the search bar under each tab to search by form number or title. 
  6. Optional: To preview a form or template, click the Actions dropdown and then select Preview.
  7. Click Add to add a form or template to your project. The forms and templates will appear in the selection pane on the right side of the screen. You can add up to 20 court forms, form templates, and/or Word templates to the same selection pane/project.
  8. Optional: In the selection pane, click the trash can icon next to items that you do not want to draft. You can also reorganize the order by clicking and dragging items
  9. In the same selection pane, click Draft new documents.
  10. Enter a specific title and choose a matter, and then click Next.
    • When choosing a document title, be as specific as possible to make it easier to track drafted documents. We recommend using the client’s name and the practice area/case type as part of your naming conventions. 
    • The matter is pre-selected with the matter you were viewing while in Clio Manage. 
  11. On the populate page, start adding case-specific information in the fillable fields. You do not need to complete every field.
    • The menu on the left shows the types of cards or categories that the forms and templates are asking for. As you complete required fields, each card title will show a green checkmark and the card itself will show a Completed pill to indicate that a specific card is complete.
    • Each card has information specific to that card, including fields from the selected forms and templates. Click the arrow next to each card to view the required fields and the number of times that a specific field appears in the documents in the project.
    • If a card requires a contact, when you select a contact, the card will automatically populate with the rest of the information that is available on that Clio Manage contact’s card. If you do not have an existing contact to select, select the Attach contact field, and then click New Contact to add this contact to your Clio Draft contacts list. Contacts created in Clio Draft will not be synced back into the matter in Clio Manage.
    • As you enter information in the fields, the data will populate everywhere in the selected court forms and templates wherever there is a match. For example, if you enter a client’s name on this screen, the client’s name will automatically fill every spot in the forms and templates where the client’s name is needed.
  12. Once you are finished, click Generate document(s). If you are drafting court forms, you will now be able to finalize and edit the remainder of each form directly. If you are drafting Word documents, you can preview the inserted information and toggle highlighting off once finished.
  13. On the drafting/preview screen, click each court form in the project to make edits and changes directly on the documents. 
    • For court forms, the data you entered in the populate page will automatically be populated in the appropriate fields in a blue font color for visual aid. When you download the forms, the text will be black.
    • If you manually edit a field that came from the populate page, the field will disconnect from the populate page and turn grey. This means that if you go back to the populate page, edit the same field, and then generate the documents again, the information you entered in the populate field will populate in every field where there is a match except the greyed out field. If you do not want to make this update, click Reset to initial value on the right side of the field. 
    • As you type text into single-line blue fields, the text will automatically shrink as you reach the edges of the text box, allowing you to fit more text into small spaces. Text in multi-line fields will not automatically shrink.
    • If you need additional text boxes or more space, click Add custom field from the edit banner, click on the document where you want to add the text, and then start entering your text. You can also click the box to move it, change the text size, or delete the box. 
  14. Optional: If you need to create copies of any of the forms or templates in your project, hover over the form or templates title in the Documents panel and click Duplicate. Enter the number of copies you want to create and click Duplicate.
    • Once the copies are created, they become their own originals, which means that any changes made to one will not appear on the other. 
  15. Optional: If you need to add more forms, click Add documents, choose your forms from your library, and then click Confirm. 
    • Once you add more forms, you will be taken to the populate page where you can add information for those new forms in case you have new fields that were not in the initial set of forms. This is helpful if you started a case and may not have known all the forms you needed.
  16. When your forms and templates are finished, you have the following options:
    • Click Save to Clio to save all of the documents in your project back to the matter in Clio Manage.
    • Click Download to download a PDF/.docx of each individual document or a zip file of all the document.
    • Click Esign to proceed through the electronic signature tool that is built into Clio Draft. Learn more about eSignatures here.

 

Edit drafted documents

If you need to make changes to drafted documents or continue editing, you can access the drafted documents from the Document sets, Documents, or Matters tabs. Documents and sets that have been saved to Clio Manage using the Save to Clio button can be edited from the Documents subtab in the Clio Manage matter.

Document sets/Documents Matters Clio Manage
  1. Go to Document sets or Documents, depending on whether you drafted multiple documents or a single document.
  2. Search for the drafted documents.
  3. Click the Actions dropdown and then select Edit.
  4. Continue through the document drafting process to make your changes.

 

Add more documents to a project

After drafting documents, you may need to add additional forms. You can do this by editing the drafted documents from the Document sets, Documents, or Matters tabs.

Document sets/Documents Matters
  1. Go to Document sets or Documents, depending on whether you drafted an individual form or template or more than one.
  2. Search for the drafted documents.
  3. Click the Actions dropdown and then select Edit.
  4. Continue through the document drafting process until you reach the drafting/preview screen (after the populate page).
  5. In the selection pane, click Add documents.
  6. Select the documents you want to add and then click Confirm.
  7. Add information to the populate page for the new documents to add data in new fields.
  8. Continue through the rest of the document drafting process.

 

Rename drafted documents

You can rename drafted documents from the Document sets, Documents, or Matters tabs.

Document sets/Documents Matters
  1. Go to Document sets or Documents, an individual form or template or more than one.
  2. Search for the drafted documents.
  3. Click the Actions dropdown and then select Edit.
  4. Continue through the document drafting process until you reach the drafting/preview screen (after the populate page).
  5. In the selection pane, click the pencil icon next to a document’s name.
  6. Enter a new name and then click Rename.

 

Delete drafted documents

You can delete drafted documents from the Document sets, Documents, or Matters tabs.

Document sets/Documents Matters
  1. Go to Document sets or Documents, an individual form or template or more than one.
  2. Search for the drafted documents.
  3. Click the Actions dropdown and then select Delete.

 

Need more help?

Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful