Law Office Technology: Clio and DropBox

I knew that Clio released an integration with DropBox and that it worked pretty well. I didn’t realize how powerful it was until I recently converted a 30 user firm to Clio. Since most of the users at the firm already had DropBox, they were extremely excited about how the integration worked.

The best function of using DropBox to store your Clio documents is that they still reside on your server. So if the internet goes out, you still have access to all your documents. If your server blows up, you can log into Clio and get all your documents. From a DR (Disaster Recovery) standpoint, this is the best solution.

Some Starter Tips

The firm needs to purchase a “master” DropBox Account that the firm owns. Don’t link to an individual user account.
Purchase PackRat as well, this will give you the ability to restore documents at any time. So if 3 years from now, you realize someone deleted a document, you can find and restore it. You can’t do that with traditional backups.
Only install the “master” DropBox Account on your document server(the computer where your documents reside). You don’t need to put DropBox on every machine.
Map a drive “Windows” or use an Alias “Mac” to share this folder to all your users.
If attorneys have their own DropBox account, just share their matters with them.
Use Folders like correspondence, discovery, ect in the the DropBox Folders. This will make them easier to see in Clio. \
Clio has a pretty good article about using this and setting it up.

Part 1: Setting up Clio and DropBox

Go to the System Settings –> Dropbox.com Settings

Authorize DropBox

Login to your DropBox master account (Make sure this comes up. If it does not you are probably logged into your own personal DropBox Account.)

Allow the connections between Clio and DropBox.

Go back into the settings and make sure DropBox is your default Document Source.

Part 2: DropBox and Your Documents

If we go to DropBox, we see that Clio has created a folder called DropBox.

The folder is arranged by client name.

If we drill down to one of those folders, we can see that they are then arranged by Matter ID.

Part 3: Moving Documents into DropBox

Once you have setup DropBox and Clio you need to copy documents from their old location into the Clio DropBox Folder.

In the example above, I found the documents on my computer, and copied them into the correct DropBox Folder. I then logged into the matter in Clio and all my documents appeared, as seen below.

While this works flawlessly, it would be much nicer if I could create subfolders to see my Documents in Clio. In my DropBox Folder, I created the following Folders and dragged all my Documents into them.