How do you export Clio data for an AI data license?
Clio Manage holds a firm's matters, contacts, time entries, bills and notes. Most of it describes clients, and clients own it. The part a firm can offer on its own is smaller: how the firm runs work, with its templates, checklists and billing habits. This guide covers how to find and size that layer, and where Clio's export tools stop.
What a Clio account usually holds
| Matters | Each matter has a description, a practice area, a status and dates. The matter form is what the matter export returns. |
| Activities | Time entries and expense entries, with the person who logged them and the narrative text. The narrative is where client facts often leak in. |
| Bills and balances | Invoices, payments and outstanding amounts. These show how a firm prices and collects, and they carry client names. |
| Contacts | People and companies tied to matters. Every row is personal data, so this layer is almost never a candidate. |
| Documents, notes and templates | Uploaded files, matter notes and any document templates the firm built. The templates are the firm's own work; the filed documents are not. |
How data leaves Clio, route by route
| Tool | What an export gives you | What is missing or needs an admin |
|---|---|---|
| The Exports page (bulk CSV) | A CSV for each data type listed on the page, meant for moving to another system. Clio's help center says only users with administrator permissions can run it. | The help pages we could reach do not list every field. Check the page for the account to see which data types it offers, and confirm in a sample file. |
| Matter list export with filters | The matters that match the applied filters, not only the page on screen. | Only the matter form fields. Time entries, notes and documents are separate. |
| Activities export | Time and expense entries as CSV or PDF, from the main Activities page or from one matter. Time and expenses can be exported together or apart. | Billing outcomes sit in bills and reports, not in this file. |
| Reports | A report such as accounts receivable, set to CSV output. Clio's help center names this as the route for outstanding balances. | We did not find a published bill-by-bill export in the help pages we read. The trust report is generated before an export if trust balances matter. |
| The Manage API (v4) | A developer can pull records through OAuth 2.0 after a user grants access. Index calls return up to 200 results a page, and cursor paging has no record cap. | Offset paging stops at 10,000 records. Requests are rate limited and answered with a 429 when the limit is passed. The documentation we read does not list per-endpoint details for bills or documents. |
Tool names belong to their owners and are used only to say where records usually live. Export features change by plan and version, so check the current rules for your account.
Whose records these are
A law firm holds its clients' matter files in trust, in a practical and an ethical sense. The facts of a case, the correspondence and the filed documents are the client's. A firm cannot simply decide that years of them are available. Rules of professional conduct differ by state and country, so the firm's counsel or ethics advisor decides what is possible, and this is general information, not legal advice.
What the firm made itself is different. A matter-opening checklist, an engagement letter template, a staffing model for a type of case and the firm's coding rules for time entries describe how the firm works. Those can be gathered from templates and from process notes without touching any client's file.
Matter counts and the years Clio covers
For the intake, report the number of matters and the number of templates or process documents the firm wrote. The matter filter export shows a count of what the filters match, and an administrator can read it from the file once it is downloaded. If you count from a screen instead, say it is estimated.
Note the date range of the first and last matter opened, the practice areas and whether the firm used Clio for the whole period. A firm that moved from another system will have a shorter history in Clio than in its own memory. The documentation does not say how far back Clio keeps data, so we did not find a published retention period.
Who runs it and what changes with the plan
The bulk export needs an administrator. The API needs a developer application and a user who grants it access. Which features appear can depend on the plan and on permissions in the firm's account, so check the current rules for the account before promising a file.
What stays out of a law firm's Clio set
| Matter files and filed documents | They belong to clients, so the firm does not offer them. |
| Client and contact details | Names, addresses, phone numbers and emails are not licensed. Contacts do not leave in any form. |
| Time-entry narratives and notes | They describe real cases. They stay out unless counsel confirms a set of entries has been rewritten as generic task descriptions. |
| Trust accounting and payment data | Trust ledger balances, bank details and payment records are not licensed. |
A worked case: a family law firm
A six-lawyer family law firm has used Clio for nine years. Its administrator downloads the matter list for the date range and counts the matters by type, then the managing partner collects the firm's own intake checklist, three letter templates and the time-entry coding guide. None of it is taken from a client file. The firm's counsel reads the gathered set and removes a template that names a former client. A small sample of the remaining templates is prepared, and the owner approves it before anything is shared.
Questions owners ask about this
Can a firm license its time entries if the clients are not named?
The narrative text often holds facts that identify a matter even without a name. Counsel would have to review a set of entries, and many firms will decide to keep them out.
Does the Exports page include documents?
The help pages we reached describe data types for moving between systems, and we did not find a statement that every uploaded file is included. Test with a sample export on the account.
Our migration to another system is coming. Is that a good time?
A full export taken for the migration also shows the firm what it holds, which helps with sizing. Keep that file inside the firm, because it contains every client's information.
Is there an easier route than the API?
For templates and checklists, usually yes: they are files the firm already owns and can gather by hand. The API is for pulling large structured sets such as matters or activities.
Didn't find your question? Ask us directly.
Sources
The vendor's own pages this guide draws on. Some help centers did not open for us, and where a step rests on a summary and not the page itself, the guide says so. Menus and limits change by plan and version, so check the current pages for your account.
Keep reading
Related kinds of records
- SOPs and knowledge bases: Procedures with their edit history and comments; published help articles add nothing.
- Closed-deal files: The data room, the model, the memo and the later review for one deal, only where the agreements allow.
- Client deliverables and drafts: Each draft beside its final version with the comments that changed it, kept only where the client agrees.
Industries that keep these records
- Law firms: Revision trails and intake emails, with privileged matter files kept out entirely.