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Clio has document management. Every matter in Clio Manage has a place for its files, Clio Drive puts those files on your desktop, and plenty of firms run on Clio document management without a second system.
Other Clio firms keep a Dropbox, a shared drive or a folder of email in someone’s inbox running beside it. Then a vendor tells you that’s a sign you need a document management system, and you’re left wondering whether it’s true.
It’s a fair question, and the honest answer depends on how your firm works. Clio is built to run the practice: time, billing, tasks and the calendar. The decision is whether it should also be the home for every document and email a matter produces.
Clio stays in every version of the answer. What you’re choosing is where your client file lives.
Does Clio Have Document Management?
Yes. Clio Manage includes document management, and Clio’s legal document features give every matter unlimited storage, search across file names, text and metadata, and desktop access through Clio Drive. For a firm whose documents are mostly attachments to the matter, that covers a lot of ground.
The difference between practice management and document management comes down to how much your firm asks of its files. Clio’s tools are built into a practice management system, and here’s what they include.
What Clio’s Document Tools Cover
Clio describes its document tools in five groups:
For AI drafting and advanced document automation, Clio offers Clio Draft, which our Clio Draft review covers in detail.
Where Clio Keeps a Matter’s Email
Clio’s Outlook add-in files emails, threads and attachments to a matter, where the emails show up in the matter’s Communications and the attachments in its Documents. If Clio is your firm’s only system, that’s where a matter’s email lives.
That’s the setup to compare any other system against. The question is whether everything your firm produces for a matter ends up there.
Five Signs Your Firm Has Outgrown Clio’s Document Tools
Your firm has outgrown Clio’s document tools when a matter’s file no longer lives in one place you can search. Each sign below describes a matter file that has spread beyond Clio, and you can check every one of them at your own firm this week.
Check your firm against the first two signs:
A split file turns every lookup into three searches, and each extra search is another chance to miss something.
The next three signs are about where files go and what happens to them once they’re there:
The more of these describe your firm, the stronger the case for giving the file its own home beside Clio.
When Is Clio Alone Enough for Your Documents?
Clio alone is enough when every document and email for a matter already lives in Clio and your staff find what they need there. Plenty of Clio users are happy with it: a paralegal reviewing Clio on Capterra called its document management “reliable and easy to use, making it simple to keep case files organized and accessible.”
The simple storage inside a practice management app fits simple needs well. As those needs grow, more firms, midsize ones included, move their documents into a dedicated document management system.
Clio alone is enough for your documents if all of these are true:
LexWorkplace has limits worth knowing before you add it. It has no client upload portal, since it sends documents out by secure link and doesn’t take uploads back, so a firm that needs clients to upload files keeps a portal for that, such as Clio for Clients, where clients upload documents to the firm. It has no real-time co-editing either: one person edits a document at a time, and firms that draft together live use Microsoft 365 co-authoring for that stage.
How Does a Clio Firm Split the Work with LexWorkplace?
A Clio firm that adds LexWorkplace keeps Clio as the system of record for the practice and makes LexWorkplace the system of record for the file, with the Clio matter linking the two. Both are among the most widely adopted cloud tools at law firms: the ABA’s 2024 Legal Technology Survey Report found that 73% of firms use cloud-based legal tools, with document management and practice management software the most widely adopted.
Which System Holds Each Part of a Matter?
The split gives each system one job. Here’s which system holds each part of a matter when your firm runs Clio and LexWorkplace together:
Documents live in LexWorkplace only, so nobody has to decide which copy to trust.
What Changes Day to Day
One matter moves through both systems in four steps.
The pull works from your open Clio matters and copies each one’s details into LexWorkplace, and our guide to how LexWorkplace integrates with Clio shows what carries over.
Email needs one firm-wide decision: your firm files it in LexWorkplace or in Clio, and never in both. We’d file it in LexWorkplace, because a matter’s email then sits beside its documents and LexWorkplace’s full-text search covers email and attachments as well as documents.
How to Roll Out LexWorkplace Beside Clio
Adding LexWorkplace beside Clio works best when firm leadership explains the split before anyone logs in: what goes where, and why. Name the problems your staff will recognize, like the email nobody could find or the second copy on the shared drive.
Staff can disagree with the decision and still follow it, as long as they know the reason for it.
What Happens to the Documents Already in Clio?
In most cases they move, because a Clio firm adding LexWorkplace brings its documents out of Clio, and out of Dropbox, shared drives and other places, so each matter’s file lives in one system. Centralizing them is the point of adding a DMS, since a file split between two systems is the problem you set out to fix.
We onboard firms directly, including the migration, so your team isn’t left to move years of files alone.
A little cleanup before the move helps, as long as it stays little:
A clean starting point is enough, and the archive can stay as it is.
Keep Clio and Give Every Matter’s File One Home
Clio runs the practice well, and for some firms its document tools are all they need. When email in personal inboxes and a side Dropbox start splitting the matter file, give that file one home and keep Clio for time, billing and tasks.
LexWorkplace links each matter to Clio, so your staff work in both without retyping matter details. To see how a matter looks with its documents and email in one place, start a 7-day free trial.
WHAT’S NEXT
