Filevine to Clio
Firms move from Filevine to Clio when they want billing, trust accounting and a wider ecosystem with less configuration to maintain. We decide with you what section data survives as Clio custom fields, then migrate matters, documents, notes and balances into a structure you can maintain.
The usual reason is that the practice mix changed. A firm that has moved into commercial litigation, employment, family or transactional work needs invoices, trust accounting and clients who expect a bill. Filevine can be pushed in that direction, but Clio is built for it, and the difference shows up on your first reconciliation.
The second reason is maintenance fatigue. Filevine rewards firms with an operations owner and punishes firms without one. When the person who designed your project types leaves, the configuration stops evolving and the automation slowly goes stale. Clio asks for much less ongoing attention while giving you a larger integration marketplace for specific problems.
What you give up is workflow control. Clio matter stages will not enforce a phase, deadline chains do not exist in the same form, and Clio custom fields cannot hold repeating rows the way Filevine sections do. High-volume plaintiff firms almost always regret this direction. Firms rebalancing toward hourly work almost never do.
Filevine
A project-based case management platform that firms configure heavily around their own phases, sections and custom fields.
- Deep configurability per project type
- Phases and deadline chains drive the work
- Strong document automation and templates
- Lead Docket for intake and marketing attribution
- Reporting across the fields you configure
- Configuration-heavy to build and maintain
- Billing and trust accounting are lighter than general practice tools
- Needs an internal owner to stay clean
- Cost of change grows with the configuration
Clio
The broadest general practice management platform in legal, covering matters, billing, trust accounting and a large integration marketplace.
- Largest integration marketplace in legal software
- Mature billing and trust accounting
- Clio Grow for intake and CRM
- Well documented open API
- Deep training, support and consultant network
- Less phase-driven than PI-specific systems
- No native medical records or treatment module
- Matter custom fields are flat rather than sectioned
- Heavy plaintiff reporting usually needs add-ons
What moves, and where it lands
How Filevine records map to Clio. Every row is reviewed with your team before anything is imported.
| Filevine | Clio | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | →Matters | Map project types onto Clio practice areas and matter custom field sets. |
| Sections and Custom Fields | →Custom Field Sets | Clio fields cannot hold repeating rows, so summarize or attach an export. |
| Contacts and Org Contacts | →Contacts and Companies | Project-level contact roles become matter contact relationships in Clio. |
| Docs | →Documents | Build the Clio folder template first, then map Filevine doc folders into it. |
| Notes and Activity Feed | →Matter Notes | Migrate user-authored notes and leave automated feed entries in an archive. |
| Tasks | →Tasks | Open tasks only; rebuild recurring Filevine automation as Clio task lists. |
| Calendar and deadline chains | →Calendar Entries | Each calculated deadline becomes a static Clio event you maintain manually. |
| Filevine billing data | →Activities and Bills | Check for unbilled time and open balances before the cutover weekend. |
| Lead Docket Leads | →Clio Grow Leads | Stages and sources need remapping; Grow pipelines differ from Lead Docket. |
What to watch for
- Repeating Filevine sections are the central design problem. Clio custom fields are flat, so a provider list or negotiation history has to become a summary field, a note, or an exported document filed on the matter. Decide this section by section before mapping, and be willing to lose granularity you never actually report on.
- Deadline chains become static events. After the migration nothing recalculates when a filing date moves, so the firm needs a docketing habit or a court rules integration from the Clio marketplace. This is the operational change most often underestimated in this direction.
- Document volume and folder naming both need attention. Filevine doc folders and categories are richer than a default Clio setup, so agree the Clio folder template up front and accept that doc categories collapse into folder names or document titles.
- Filevine document automation does not port. Templates built on Filevine merge fields need rebuilding for Clio, which is a smaller capability, so identify the handful of documents your team generates most often and plan those specifically.
- Reporting has to be rebuilt from scratch. Reports driven by Filevine section fields have no equivalent unless the same data lands in Clio custom fields, so decide which three or four reports the partners actually read and design the field mapping around them.
- Lead Docket to Clio Grow is a project, not a data load. The pipeline models differ, marketing attribution fields do not line up, and phone integration works differently. Sequence Grow after the Clio Manage go live unless intake is the whole reason you are moving.
Six to twelve weeks is typical. Most of the schedule goes on deciding what happens to section data and on document migration rather than on the Clio configuration itself, which is comparatively quick. Firms that first agree the small set of reports they need tend to finish faster, because that decision settles most of the field mapping arguments.
Questions about this move
Can Clio hold our Filevine section data?
What do we do about deadlines after the move?
Is Clio billing actually better than Filevine billing?
Will staff find Clio easier?
Move from Filevine to Clio.
Tell us how many matters, users, and documents are involved. We will come back with a plan, a field map, and a realistic timeline.