Overview of Custom Role Permissions

With Clio you can create custom roles and apply specific permissions to these roles to ensure that every user in your firm has the right access to the information they need and the ability to take the necessary actions in Clio. Review the information below to understand what level of access you can control and apply when you create a custom role.

Contacts management

Contact management permissions control a user's ability to view and manage contacts, as well as define what actions a user can perform with them.

• Create contacts: Allows users to add a new contact, person, or company to their firm.

  Note: Enabling Create contacts will also enable the Edit contacts permission.
• Edit contacts: Allows users to edit contact properties like type, name, contact information, address, tags, custom fields, employees, and billing preferences

• Delete contacts: Allows users to remove a single contact record from the system. A deleted contact can be recovered by the system administrator.

  Note: Enabling Delete contacts will also enable the Edit contacts permission.

  • Bulk delete contacts: Allow users to remove multiple contacts simultaneously.

    Note: Enabling Bulk delete contacts will also enable Delete contacts.
• Export contacts: Enables the exporting of the firm's contacts via a PDF or CSV file.
• Send review requests: Allows users to send a review request.

Matter management

Matter management permissions control user access to matters and all associated information, including documents, notes, communications, and activities. You can define which roles can view, edit, create, delete, and export matter-related information. This ensures data integrity and appropriate matter access for each user role. These permissions define what a user can do with matters.

• Create matters: Allows users to create a new matter.
• Edit matter properties: Allow users to edit properties for a single matter.

  • Bulk edit matters: Allow users to edit multiple matters simultaneously.

    Note: Enabling Bulk edit matters will also enable the Edit matter properties permission.

• Delete matters: Allows users to delete a matter.

  Important: Deleting a matter is a permanent action.
  Note: Enabling Delete matters will also enable the Edit matter properties permission.
  • Bulk delete matters: Allow users to delete multiple matters simultaneously.
• Export Matters: Allow users to export matters in PDF or CSV format.
• View matter timeline: Allow users to see a chronological view of all activities and updates related to a specific matter. This includes actions like document uploads, time entries, and stage changes, located in the matter dashboard.
• View restricted matters: Views high-level info for matters the user cannot access.
• View matter financials: Allow users read-only access to the financial overview section on the matter dashboard, including, work in progress balance, outstanding balance, matter trust funds balance, matter budget (Billable and Non-billable).

Timekeeping

Timekeeping permissions control a user's access to activities and expenses.

View Activities

• View all activities: Allow users to view all activities.
• View activities from accessible matters: Allow users to view all activities for matters they own or have access to.
• View own activities: Allow users to view their own activities only.

Manage Activities

• Manage all activities: Allow users to manage all activities.
• View activities from accessible matters: Allow users to manage all activities for matters they own or have access to.
• View own activities: Allow users to manage their own activities only.

Financial management

Financial permissions control access to bills, transactions, and accounts. These permissions are critical for custom roles as they determine a user's access to financial subtabs (e.g., Transactions and Bills) within a matter or contact card. These permissions determine a user's access to financial actions and details of your firm's finances.

Accounts

Accounts permission allows users to see account information based on the following three levels:

• All bank accounts: Includes all accounts in the firm, account balances, and account properties. Enables access to accounts in the global navigation.
• Limited: Display account names and essential details for managing transactions and bills without displaying balances. Does not enable access to accounts in the global navigation.

• None: Does not see any account information.

  Note: Selecting None will disable the Manage bills and trust requests and View transactions permissions.

Transactions

• View transactions: Allows users to see the Transactions tab within a Matter or Contact card. This permission is required for users to view trust account activity and retainer balances.

  Note: To view transactions, the user also needs at minimum the Limited view of bank account information permission for Accounts.

Bills and trust requests

• View bills and trust requests: Allow users to view the Bills section in the left navigation and the Bills tab in Matters and Contacts, as well as viewing, quick viewing, downloading, and printing bills and copying links to bills.

  Granular billing permissions within this option include allowing this permission for All bills & trust requests or limiting this permission to Accessible matters or Responsible attorney. Select None to prevent the user from viewing any bills or trust requests.

• Manage draft bills and trust requests: Allow users to edit and delete draft bills and trust requests, and submit them for approval.

  Granular billing permissions within this option include allowing this permission for All bills & trust requests or limiting this permission to Accessible matters or Responsible attorney. Select None to prevent the user from managing any draft bills or trust requests.

  Note: Enabling this permission will also enable the same access level for View bills and trust requests.

• Approve bills and trust requests: Allow users to approve bills and trust requests that have been submitted for approval.

  Note: Enabling this permission will also enable View bills and trust requests.

• Process bills and trust requests: Allow users to void bills and trust requests, and record payments.

  Note: Enabling this permission will also enable the View bills and trust requests and View bank accounts permissions.

• Send bills and trust requests: Allow users to send bills and trust requests to clients, and mark bills as sent.

  Note: Enabling this permission will also enable the View bills and trust requests permission.

• Create bills and trust requests: Allow users to create new bills, new trust requests, statements of accounts, legal aid bills, quick bills, and duplicate new requests.

  Note: Enabling this permission will also enable the View activities and View bills and trust requests permissions.

Firm settings

Firm settings permissions control a user's ability to view and manage your firm's administrative information. These permissions define what a user can do with firm-wide settings.

• View account firm feed: Allow users to view the firm feed via the firm's dashboard.
• Manage roles: Allow users to create, edit, archive, assign, and unassign roles to other firm users.
• Manage users: Allow users to invite, remove, and edit firm user information.
• Manage custom fields: Allow users to create, edit, delete, and convert contact and matter custom fields.
• Manage location for review requests: Allow users to manage the Google business profile selected for Client Reviews.

Conflict check

Conflict check settings control a user's ability to initiate conflict checks and view the conflict check report. Learn about conflict checks.

• Manage conflict checks: Any potential conflict found that is associated with a matter to which a user does not have access will appear as a line item marked as hidden and will be inaccessible to the user.

• View conflict check report: By default, only administrators have the ability to view a conflict check report.

  Important: When applying this permission, a user will be able to view the full PDF report. The report includes information about all conflict check results, including details that the user may not normally have access to, as specified by the matter permissions.

Up next

• Create and Manage Custom Roles: Build a custom role, apply the permissions described above, and edit or delete roles as your firm's needs change.
• Assign and Unassign Roles: Once your custom roles are set up, assign them to users in your firm.
• Roles and Permissions in Clio Manage: If you would rather use Clio's predefined roles instead of building your own, read this article for an overview of the roles available and the access each one provides.