Automate Clio New Matter Setup: Google Drive & Email Alerts

Automate your Clio matter intake—every hour

This n8n workflow automatically detects newly opened matters in Clio, creates a matching Google Drive folder structure, generates practice-area documents from Google Docs templates, sets Clio tasks and calendar deadlines, then logs the setup and sends an email alert to staff with direct links.

What this workflow does

• Runs hourly on a schedule and fetches open matters from the Clio API.
• Deduplicates processed matter IDs using n8n workflow static data so only new matters are handled.
• For each new matter, checks Google Drive for an existing matter folder under a configured parent; if missing, it creates the root folder.
• Creates a standard set of subfolders in the matter’s Drive folder and stores folder links for reporting.
• Copies and merges Google Docs templates based on practice-area configuration, replacing merge tags via the Google Docs API.
• Creates a practice-area-specific task checklist in Clio, with due dates calculated from the matter open date.
• Calculates intake deadlines (calendar-day or business-day offsets) and creates all-day Clio calendar entries for each configured deadline rule.
• Builds a setup summary, logs it via a separate “guardrail” sub-workflow, and sends a styled HTML email to staff with links to the Drive folder and generated documents.

Use cases

• Law firms that want zero-touch onboarding when a new Clio matter is opened.
• Teams standardizing intake: consistent Drive structure, automatic checklists, and accurate deadline creation.
• Ops leaders needing audit-friendly setup logs plus immediate email notifications for new matters.

Technical details

• n8n schedule (hourly) + Clio API (OAuth2 credential)
• Google Drive operations (folder search/create)
• Google Docs API for template copy + merge tag replacement
• Email Send with HTML content for staff alerts
• Uses workflow elements including if, code, no op, sticky note, plus a guardrail sub-workflow for logging

Setup requires adding your Clio OAuth2 credential and setting CLIO_BASE_URL to your Clio domain.