Clio custom fields

Hi there, Linda Artesani from the Accountants Law Lab. This week I'm gonna dive into some more features in Clio 'cause I think that the more I go and dig into these things, the more we can share and help make you a better advisor to your clients. So a lot of us as accountants and bookkeepers, we end up having to, and we're asked all the time, well, what software is the best? Do you know what software is the best? Or what works the best with QuickBooks? Or those are the questions we get asked as, as the person in charge of the accounting for the law firm. And I can tell you honestly that it— there's a lot of software out there. At one point I was gonna take and do posts on all these different software and compare them, and I realized there's like thousands of them just for, just for the legal industry. So I'm gonna keep it high level. And we're working with Clio because that is the number one software for attorneys, and it's probably the one that you're gonna get as a bookkeeper. You're gonna get people coming to you, what software you in, are you in? They'll say they're in Clio. You're going to find as you get these clients that A, they probably don't have the software connected 'cause they're fearful that they've heard from other attorneys that you don't connect it 'cause it just doesn't work really well, which is not true. Or you're gonna hear that, yeah, I do the billing in it, but I really don't use it the way I'm supposed to, I don't think. So they're letting you know right there, that little tip, they're letting you know that they're not using the software to its fullest potential. And that's where you can pretty much dive in and be the hero and let your client know that I know this stuff, I know this software, even though the side that you use, and I'm gonna help you make the software better. So this week's post is really about the custom fields feature inside of Clio. Now, if you've not ever used it, it's a feature that you want to use the right way. So there's Clio Grow, which is an add-on to Clio Manage. Clio Manage is where you would log in and do all the work track the time, bill your clients. That's where all the client work would be. And they came out with Clio Grow later, which is a way to track your lead, the law firm's leads. And it's really like, I like to call it like Salesforce for attorneys. So that's a piece that's added on and it's separate. When you start to add these custom fields, make sure that you start the custom field inside Clio Manage and then add it into Clio Grow. So don't do it the other way around. Logically, you'd probably think, well, I gotta do it where it starts, but you really wanna do it in Manage. And then add it into Clio Grow. That's the way it should work. So you may be wondering, what do I use custom fields for? Isn't that stuff already in the product? Well, it's really a product for lawyers, but not specifically to practice area. So this is where you can start to capture those details. You want to get your client to start using the forms that you can start using and create forms in Clio. You've got the ability to do that right there. They've got DocuSign in there. You've got the ability to use Clio for, for document storage. So you're storing the documents, you're storing the emails. It's a practice management tool for lawyers. It's not like LeanLaw, which is just time and billing. And of course, a little bit more than that, but on the highest level, it's time and billing software where this is everything in one big package. So when you start to work with these firms, for example, if you have an immigration firm, they're gonna wanna track other details that a lot of the other firms won't be tracking. So you might wanna in Add to that, talk to the client, say, look, we can add some custom fields. So when the, when the LAs, the legal assistants, or the, or the paralegals are entering the details of the client that they're onboarding, they can add a box for current immigration status. They can add a box for marital status. They can add a box for country of current country citizenship. So let's start again. Country of current citizenship. Alien number, case number, court deadline. These are all little boxes that you can put in. What's great about this software is that you're able to put in maybe current immigration status. You can put in dropdown list and put the different answers so that way you're not getting a lot of different, maybe typed or written answers. You don't wanna use that written box if you don't have to. Um, marital status, married, single, uh, divorced. You could have those boxes in there. You could put in there about their children, if they have children, if they have custody of their children. There's a lot more things. If you start to think about the information that they gather from their clients, from their clients, the law firm clients, this is information that once it's inside of Clio, now when you start to create these documents that you have in their templates, you can extract those details from the initial input of the details of the client and it will get populated on the forms. Mm-hmm. See, I'm saving this time. We're saving a lot of time, and we're using automation. So you can make these boxes be used for, like, mandatory. So I wanna know the status of the marital status of the client. I make that a mandatory box. Maybe for a family lawyer, you wanna put the judge that's on the case in there. You wanna put the opposing party that's there. You wanna put the date of the marriage. Maybe it's for family law, could be a divorce, right? So date of marriage, date of separation, number of children, party that's requesting custody of the children. Is there healthcare through the employer? So these are boxes that you want to create custom fields that you will then be able to use in templated documents, documents that you do use over and over again. And you can create these inside of Clio so that you're able to do that management of the software right inside the software. So you're gathering those details. And then, as you start to use the forms that you're gonna file with the court, you can actually create them as templates and insert these custom fields. So it's gonna suck that data in from that initial information that you put in for the client, the law firm's client. And that's gonna make it easier for the legal assistants. It will, will stop some of the errors that could occur. It's gonna make it easier for the paralegals, anybody who's preparing these documents for the attorneys. This is a way to set yourself above and beyond just a general bookkeeper that may or may not know how to do trust accounting. So this is where we want to step forward and be that trusted advisor. I know I hate— I'm getting kind of tired of that term, but it's really important. There's no other way of describing it, and we're not just a bookkeeper. I can't stand that term even more like, oh, she's just a bookkeeper. No, I've helped you now create not only choose the software, but help you customize the software by your practice area. And doesn't that set you aside from others and really show other people that you know what you're talking about, that you don't have to be taught how to balance a trust account, you know how to do it. So this is some of the things that we teach at the Accountants Law Lab, the mastermind group. Of course, we have a course as well with Fast Track Legal Accounting. If you have any questions, comments, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to hear if you're using this tip and, um, if you have any other tips or any other topics you'd like me to talk about. So on that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. Bye now. Bye.