Clio API
Clio's REST API for integrating with the leading cloud-based legal practice management platform, enabling agents to manage matters, contacts, time entries, tasks, documents, and billing data for law firm automation.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
TLS enforced. OAuth2-only authentication eliminates shared API key risk. Scopes are granular per resource type. Data residency options available across US, Canada, EU, and Australia. SOC2 Type II and HIPAA Business Associate Agreements available.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Your law firm or legal department uses Clio as the practice management system and you need agents to automate intake, time tracking, billing, or matter management tasks.
Avoid When
You are not a law firm or legal services organization, or you need a general-purpose CRM without legal-specific workflows.
Use Cases
- • Automatically creating matters and contacts in Clio from intake form submissions or email parsing
- • Logging billable time entries from agent-tracked work sessions to the correct client matter
- • Retrieving matter status and task lists for automated legal workflow orchestration
- • Syncing Clio client and matter data with external CRM or accounting systems
- • Generating and retrieving billing records and invoice data for automated accounts receivable workflows
Not For
- • Non-legal organizations — Clio is purpose-built for law firms and legal departments
- • General document management without legal matter context
- • High-volume transactional operations beyond law firm scale
Interface
Authentication
OAuth 2.0 is the only supported authentication method — no API key option. Authorization code flow for user-context access. Client credentials flow not supported; all access is user-scoped. Agents must complete the OAuth flow on behalf of a Clio user account and securely store the refresh token. Access tokens expire after 24 hours.
Pricing
API access is included with all paid Clio Manage plans. Developer applications require registering an OAuth app through the Clio developer portal. No sandbox environment — testing uses a real Clio account.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ OAuth2 is mandatory — no API key fallback. Agents must manage OAuth token lifecycle including refresh token rotation
- ⚠ Access tokens expire after 24 hours — agents running long workflows must proactively refresh tokens before expiry
- ⚠ All resources (matters, contacts, time entries) are user-scoped — agents only access data the OAuth user can see
- ⚠ Daily rate limit of 10,000 requests can be exhausted quickly by agents polling for updates — use webhooks instead
- ⚠ Clio has two products (Clio Manage and Clio Grow) with separate APIs — ensure you are using the correct API for your use case
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.