Related serviceLegal I.T.See the service To set up Clio correctly for a small Ontario firm, work through six steps in order: create your firm profile and user accounts, decide a matter numbering scheme, configure trust accounting to match Law Society of Ontario record-keeping rules, connect your document, email, and accounting integrations, migrate your data from PCLaw if you are switching, and lock down security with multi-factor authentication and role-based permissions. DASTech Consulting is a genuine Clio Partner, so this checklist reflects how we actually onboard firms, not a generic feature list. If you would rather hand the whole project off, that is exactly what our legal IT services for Ontario firms are built to do.
This guide is general information about technology practice, not legal advice. It reflects what we see doing hands-on IT work with Canadian law firms, and it does not account for your firm’s particular circumstances. Confirm any specific obligation with your own counsel or with the Law Society directly before you act on it.
The order matters. Getting matter numbering and trust accounting right before you import data saves hours of rework, and turning on security controls at the end (once real users exist) avoids locking yourself out mid-setup.
| Step | What you set up | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Firm profile and user accounts | Everything else attaches to your firm record and the right people |
| 2 | Matter numbering scheme | Hard to change later without renumbering existing files |
| 3 | Trust accounting | Must line up with Law Society of Ontario record-keeping obligations |
| 4 | Integrations (documents, email, accounting) | Removes double entry and keeps one source of truth |
| 5 | PCLaw migration | Your history, ledgers, and open matters need to come across cleanly |
| 6 | Security (MFA and permissions) | Protects client confidentiality and privileged data |
Start with the firm record: legal name, address, billing details, and your default time zone (Eastern for Ontario). Then add each person as a user and give them a role. A typical small firm has lawyers, a bookkeeper or accounting contact, and administrative staff, and each of those maps to a different level of access.
Getting one account per person right at the start is what makes the security step later actually work. Shared logins break the audit trail and make MFA far less useful.
Decide your matter numbering scheme before you import a single file, because renumbering after the fact is painful. A matter number is the unique identifier for each file, and most small firms use one of a few patterns:
Clio lets you set a numbering format at the firm level, so you can lock in the pattern once and have new matters pick it up automatically. The exact options available to you shift between releases, so check what your own account offers before you commit to a pattern. Pick a scheme that still reads clearly when you have thousands of matters, not just twenty. For most firms we set up, client-matter numbering is the safest long-term choice.
Set up your trust accounting to mirror your Law Society of Ontario obligations, because this is the area where mistakes carry the most risk. In Clio you configure your trust bank account separately from your operating account, and the system tracks client trust ledgers, trust transactions, and the balances you must be able to reconcile at any time.
Ontario firms must keep specific trust records under LSO By-Law 9, which governs financial transactions and records. Trust records generally have to be retained for ten years plus the current year, and the book of duplicate cash receipts has to be kept for at least six years preceding the most recent fiscal year end. Whatever software you use, you need to be able to produce those records on demand. Clio is built to support this, but the software does not replace your professional responsibility for the numbers. When we onboard a firm, we walk the bookkeeper through a full trust reconciliation before go-live so there are no surprises at month end.
Connect your integrations once the core is in place, so your documents, email, and accounting all point at the same client and matter records. This is where a lot of the day-to-day time savings come from, because it removes duplicate data entry.
A quick word of caution: how trust activity flows into your general ledger through an accounting integration needs to be checked carefully, because you do not want trust and operating funds mixing anywhere in the chain.
If you are moving off PCLaw, plan the migration as its own project rather than a same-day switch. PCLaw holds years of contacts, matters, time entries, billing history, and trust ledgers, and all of that needs to arrive in Clio accurate and reconciled.
Trust balances are the part you cannot get wrong. We reconcile every trust ledger to the penny before a firm goes live. Our Heeney Lawyers cloud migration case study shows the same discipline applied to a full firm move: 90 days, zero downtime, and 100% MFA coverage at the end.
Finish by turning on multi-factor authentication for every user and tightening permissions to match each role. Your firm holds privileged and personal client information, so this step sits directly on top of your professional obligations. Rule 3.3-1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct requires you to hold in strict confidence all information concerning the business and affairs of a client acquired in the course of the professional relationship, subject to four narrow exceptions. The commentary to Rule 3.1-2, the competence rule, also expects you to develop an understanding of the technology relevant to your practice and of its benefits and risks, given that duty to protect confidential information. Separately, confirm with your own counsel whether PIPEDA or a substantially similar provincial law governs your practice, since the answer drives your breach reporting and record-keeping duties.
MFA is the single highest-value control you can turn on, and it takes minutes. Permissions take a little more thought, but they are what keep a summer student from stumbling into the trust ledger. If non-licensee staff have access to client files, read your permission settings alongside the supervision rules in Chapter 6 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, because delegating the work does not delegate the responsibility.
No, you can set up Clio yourself using this checklist. Many small firms do. A Clio Partner like DASTech is worth it when you are migrating from PCLaw, when trust accounting has to be right on day one, or when you would rather spend the time on clients. Reach out through our contact page if you want a hand.
Client-matter numbering (such as 1000-001) works well for most small firms because it groups every file under one client. Decide before you import data, since changing the scheme later means renumbering existing matters.
Clio provides trust accounting features that track client trust funds separately from operating funds and support monthly reconciliation. You are still responsible for meeting the Law Society of Ontario record-keeping requirements in By-Law 9, including retaining trust records for ten years plus the current year. Confirm before go-live that your setup reconciles cleanly and that you can produce the records By-Law 9 requires.
It depends on how much history and how many open matters and trust ledgers you have, so treat it as a scoped project rather than a fixed timeline. The bulk of the effort is cleaning and reconciling data before the import, not the import itself.
