If your intake process feels like herding cats across a word processor, this playbook is for you. We’re going to pair Clio Manage document assembly with Clio Draft questionnaires so your client data behaves like a well‑trained witness: consistent, complete, and ready when called.
Turn predictable steps into reliable outcomes. With the right automations, your immigration practice can run smoother, faster, and with fewer loose ends. Why automation matters now? Immigration work thrives on precision. The challenge isn’t knowing what to do, it’s doing it consistently, across dozens of cases, each with its own deadlines and documents. Automated Workflows in Clio Manage turn that consistency into a system. They connect a trigger (“this happens”) to an action (“do that”) — no reminders, no spreadsheets, no chasing status updates. When a matter moves stages or is created, the right tasks, documents, and templates appear automatically. It’s the difference between hoping your process is followed and knowing it is.
ClioCon lands in Boston on October 16–17, 2025. Over the next few posts, we’ll be publishing a focused series on Clio: practical ways to configure it for real‑world workflows, what the newest releases meant for day‑to‑day operations, and how to decide which features your firm should adopt now versus pilot later. If you work in or around law firm operations, this is your Super Bowl week.
Lawyers can figure things out. It is part of the job. Cross-examine a witness, interpret a statute, identify the missing comma. But clicking around practice management software at midnight until something works is not legal heroism. It is unpaid discovery. Enter the consultant. Think of a firm like 2b1 Inc. as your matter management sherpa. They have walked this trail for years. They know where firms slip, where tasks stall, and which configuration actually sticks. Most importantly, they translate how your firm really works into software that behaves like a well-trained paralegal.
Picture this: you’re on your third cup of coffee, staring at a pleading, and retyping “John Q. Client” for the fifteenth time today. Your keyboard is sighing, your paralegal is giving you side-eye, and somewhere in the distance you hear the faint weeping of billable hours slipping away. Here’s the truth: if your facts already live in Clio, you shouldn’t be retyping them like a 90s intern stuck in WordPerfect purgatory. Document automation is your escape hatch—the button that turns all that neatly stored client and matter data into polished letters, proofs, and agreements in minutes.
Law firms don’t run on luck — they run on process. Every matter your firm handles moves through predictable steps. The problem? Too often those steps live only in someone’s head, or scribbled on a sticky note, or buried in a spreadsheet no one checks. That’s where Clio Manage comes in. With tools like Matter Stages, Task Lists, and Automated Workflows, you can turn that messy “mental checklist” into a smooth, repeatable system that keeps your whole team on track. Let’s break down how it works — with real examples.
Ask any lawyer: every word and every detail matters. In court, the difference between “incident” and “accident” can change the outcome. In Clio, the way you define your fields can power automation, cleaner data, better reports, and fewer “Hey, did we get this?” emails. Out of the box, Clio has a solid set of standard fields. What it doesn’t come with is your process, your terminology, or your firm’s way of working. That’s where Custom Fields bridge the gap. Done well, they become the backbone of a smoother, smarter system. We’ll show you what that looks like in practice.
Most firms think they’ve adopted Clio, but in reality they’ve parked it at the basics — Calendar, Contacts, Matters, and Billing. That’s running enterprise software like it’s a spreadsheet. In truth, they’re only using about 20% of its capacity, leaving the real engine untouched. The fix isn’t adoption. It’s smarter configuration. We’ll show you how to unlock the other 80%.
As legal technology continues to evolve and clients demand greater value, the traditional billable hour is under scrutiny. Not every task needs to be tracked in six-minute increments especially as AI and automation handle routine work. More law firms are exploring billable hour alternatives, including flat fee billing and hybrid billing models, to better align with client needs and improve efficiency. This post explains how firms can rethink time and expense billing and how modern practice management systems—supported by 2b1 Inc. make the transition seamless.
The Clio Cloud Conference (ClioCon) 2024, held in Austin, [...]
