Clio Grow Intake Automation: Build a Legal Intake Workflow.

Clio Grow intake automation means wiring your website forms, call tracking and scheduling into Clio Grow so that every lead arrives with a source, moves through a pipeline built for its practice area, clears a conflict check before a consultation is booked, and carries its source into Clio Manage when the matter opens. The tools exist inside Grow and through Zapier; the work is the design. This piece covers the split between Grow and Manage, how leads get in with a source, pipelines and stage automations, the conflict check step, a from-scratch build, the handoff, and where Lawmatics fits.

Clio Grow is the client intake and CRM side of Clio, where leads live before they become clients; Clio Manage is the practice management side, where matters, time, billing and documents live. We have built this workflow for law firms across several practice areas, and the pattern below is the one that survives contact with a busy front desk.

Clio Grow versus Clio Manage.

The split matters because each side keeps its own records. In Grow, a person is a contact and a potential case is a matter with a pipeline stage. In Manage, a person is a contact and a case is a matter with billing, documents and a calendar. Grow's job ends when the engagement letter is signed and the matter is exported to Manage; Manage's job starts there.

Firms get into trouble when they try to run intake inside Manage, which has no pipeline and no intake automation, or try to run the whole practice inside Grow, which has no billing or trust accounting. Keep the line clean: everything before the signed engagement lives in Grow, everything after lives in Manage, and the export carries the data across.

Getting leads in with a source.

A lead without a source is a lead you cannot attribute, and attribution is the whole reason to run intake in a CRM. Grow gives you three ways to bring leads in, and each has a way to set the source.

• Grow's own web intake forms: build the form in Grow, embed it on the website or link to it, and each submission creates a contact and a matter in the pipeline you choose. Set the source on the form or as the pipeline default so every submission from that form carries it.
• Zapier: use a trigger from your website form builder, a Facebook lead form, a chat tool or a call tracking platform, and the Clio Grow action to create the contact and matter. Map the source field from the trigger, and use one Zap per channel so the source is never blank.
• Manual entry with required fields: for phone leads the front desk enters by hand, make source a required field on the quick intake form so a matter cannot be saved without one.

Call tracking belongs on that list. Put a tracking number on each campaign: one as the Local Services Ads destination, one on Google Ads landing pages, one on the website, one on the directory listing. When CallRail or a similar platform logs the call, a Zap creates or updates the Grow contact with the campaign as the source and the recording link in the notes. The phone stops being the attribution hole.

We build source as a fixed list, not free text: website organic, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, attorney referral, client referral, directory, social. Free text produces a dozen spellings of the same source and a report nobody trusts. If you are still choosing a platform, our guide to the best CRM for law firms covers the field.

Pipelines by practice area.

One pipeline for the whole firm is the most common mistake we see, because practice areas have different stages, different timelines and different documents. A personal injury intake has a records step and a limitations check; an estate planning intake has a questionnaire and a design meeting; a family law intake has a conflict check that is far more likely to hit.

Build one pipeline per practice area, with stages that reflect the real decision points: new lead, contacted, conflict cleared, consultation scheduled, consultation held, engagement sent, signed, declined. Keep the stage names parallel across pipelines so a firm-wide report still rolls up by stage.

Stage automations that actually run.

Grow's workflows attach tasks, emails and texts to stage changes. The automations that earn their keep are few and specific.

• New lead: an immediate acknowledgement email and, with consent, a text, plus a task for intake to call within minutes during business hours.
• Contacted, no consultation yet: a short follow-up sequence over several days that offers the scheduling link and stops the moment a consultation is booked.
• Conflict cleared: the consultation scheduling link goes out through Clio Scheduler or an embedded booking tool, so the consultation cannot be booked before the check.
• Consultation held: the engagement letter goes out for e-signature from Grow, with a reminder task if it is unsigned after a set number of days.
• Signed: export to Clio Manage, close the Grow matter as won, and stop every sequence.
• Declined or not a fit: a polite close-out email, a referral to another firm where appropriate, and the matter marked lost with a reason.

Texting needs two things before you switch it on: consent captured on the intake form, and 10DLC registration of your business and your messaging campaign with the carriers through your texting provider. Texts sent without both get filtered by carriers and create exposure for the firm. The consent side is covered in our TCPA compliance checklist.

Conflict check before the consultation.

The conflict check is a stage, not a note. Before any consultation is booked, someone runs the prospective client and the adverse parties through the conflict search in Clio Manage, which covers contacts, matters, notes and custom fields, and records the result on the Grow matter. Only a cleared result moves the matter to the stage that sends the scheduling link.

Doing it this way costs a few minutes per lead and prevents the worst outcome: a consultation with someone the firm cannot represent, after confidential information has already been shared. Automations that send the booking link on form submission skip this step, which is why we never set them up that way for a law firm.

Build Clio Grow intake from scratch.

Carrying the source into Clio Manage.

When the engagement is signed, the export from Grow creates or updates the contact and creates the matter in Manage. The source follows only if it is mapped to a Manage custom field. Set that mapping up once, and every matter in Manage will show where it came from, which is what lets you report revenue by source instead of leads by source.

That is the report that changes marketing decisions. Leads by source tells you which channel is loud. Signed matters and billed revenue by source tells you which channel pays. The second report requires the source field to survive the trip to Manage, and it is the first thing we check in an existing account.

Lawmatics is the alternative most firms weigh against Grow. It has heavier marketing automation, more flexible forms and its own scheduling, and it integrates with Clio Manage rather than sharing a vendor with it. Firms that want long nurture campaigns and detailed email marketing tend to choose it; firms that want the intake side to feel like the rest of Clio tend to stay with Grow.

Mistakes that break legal intake.

• No required source. The single most expensive omission, because every report downstream is built on it.
• One pipeline for every practice area. Stages stop meaning anything and automations fire at the wrong moment.
• Texting without consent or carrier registration. Carriers filter the messages and the firm carries the liability.
• No conflict check step. Booking links sent on submission put attorneys into consultations they should never have taken.
• Automations that never stop. A follow-up sequence that keeps sending after the consultation is booked reads as a firm that does not know its own clients.
• Skipping the export mapping. Matters land in Manage with no source, and the revenue-by-source report becomes impossible.