How to Run a Law Firm Conflict Check Automatically (Clio + iManage)

To run a conflict check automatically, stop treating it as one search and automate it as what it is: the same set of searches, run across the CRM, the practice-management system, and the text inside the documents, for every spelling of every party. In the film above, an intake form in Clio Grow starts the check. The agent searches Clio contacts and matters across all three spellings of each name, then searches the full text inside iManage documents, writes the memo to Microsoft Teams with who and what and where it found it, and puts the matter on a conflicts hold. It does not clear the conflict. That is the ethics partner's call.

What happens in the video

• 0:00The result
• 0:10Why a search misses it
• 0:31The intake
• 0:40Show it once
• 0:50Clio
• 0:57iManage
• 1:41The memo
• 1:49The hold
• 1:59Every intake

Systems on screen

Clio GrowClio ManageiManage WorkMicrosoft Teams

The belief that makes conflict checks fail

Ask an intake coordinator what a conflict check is and you get a confident answer: type the names, read the hits, sign the form. It is a search. The firm has a database of clients and matters, the database has a search box, and the search box is where a conflict check happens.

That answer is why conflicts get missed. A contact database only knows the names somebody typed into it, spelled the way they typed them that day. The three parties on a new matter arrive as Corvane Logistics, Corvane Logistics, Inc. and CORVANE, depending on which system you are standing in. A person searching by hand tries one of those, gets nothing, and moves on.

And the conflict that actually costs a firm its matter is usually not a row in the CRM at all. It is a name inside a document, in a closed matter, opened by a practice group nobody at intake would have thought to ask about. It was never anyone's client. It was the other side of a deal in 2023.

What the check actually is

Written out, the check on a three-party intake is five searches across four systems:

• CRM contacts, for every party and every spelling, including the entity and the people behind it.
• Matters, open and closed, including matters where a party was adverse rather than the client.
• Related entities, meaning parents, subsidiaries and guarantors, which are usually only in the intake form.
• Document text, not workspace names. The workspace is named after the client. The conflict is named inside the file.
• The result assembled into a memo a person can act on, rather than eleven browser tabs.

None of that is judgment. It is exactly the shape of work that is painful by hand and reliable when it is written down once, which is the argument we make at length in new matter intake and conflicts at scale.

The run, step by step

1. The intake arrives (0:31)

A new matter comes in through the Clio Grow intake form: a client, an adverse party, and a guarantor. Three names. That form is the trigger, so there is no version of this where somebody forgets to start the check.

2. Show it once (0:40)

Ben runs the check himself, on screen, while Caddi watches. He says what he is doing as he does it: which systems he opens, which spellings he tries, what makes a hit worth writing down. That recording is the whole configuration. Nobody writes a rule, maps a field, or builds a flow. If your firm checks something Ben does not, you show yours instead and the agent learns that one.

3. Clio, every spelling (0:50)

Contacts first, then matters, then closed matters, for every variant of every party. This is the part a human does inconsistently, not because they are careless but because the fourth spelling of the third party on a Friday afternoon is where attention runs out.

4. iManage, inside the documents (0:57)

Then the search that a name lookup cannot do: the text inside the documents, not the names of the workspaces holding them. Corvane Logistics returns nothing in Clio and two hundred and eleven documents in iManage. The hits sit in a closed 2023 matter, a different practice group, a deal where Corvane was on the other side.

That is the conflict a search misses. Not because the firm was disorganised, but because the name lives in a document and the check was pointed at a database.

5. The memo (1:41)

Caddi writes the memo into Microsoft Teams, where the ethics partner already reads things: who was searched, what was found, which system it came from, which matter it sits in, and what it needs from a person. The partner is not asked to reconstruct the search. They are asked one question.

6. The hold (1:49)

The matter status goes to conflicts hold in Clio. The file cannot quietly proceed while the question is open, which is the failure mode of a check that ends in somebody's inbox.

7. Every intake after that (1:59)

The same five searches run on every new intake form, before anyone opens a file. The point is not that this run was fast. It is that the thousandth run is identical to the first.

The thing it will not do

It does not clear the conflict. Whether an identified conflict is waivable, and whether the firm wants the matter anyway, is a judgment under the rules of professional conduct. The agent stops, states what it found, and asks. Building it the other way would be building something no ethics partner should sign off on.

That line, mechanical work automated and judgment handed back, is the same line every film in this series draws.

What you need to run this in your firm

• Your intake trigger. A Clio Grow form, a web form, an email to intake. Whatever already starts the process.
• Read access to where names live. The CRM, the practice-management system, and the document management system.
• One recording of you doing the check. Fifteen minutes, done the way your firm does it, including the parts that are not in anyone's written procedure.
• Somewhere to send the memo. Teams, Outlook, or the matter record itself.

Conflicts is the first of six jobs in a law firm back office worth automating in order. The next one, and the argument for that order, is in legal automation: what to automate first.

The rest of the series

Six films, each one a real run in the tools the work already lives in. Nothing sped past what you can read.

More for law firms

• Legal automation: what to automate first (2:27). The six jobs every law firm back office runs, in the order each one pays back, with two of them shown end to end.
• How to automate pre-bill review (2:47). Forty-one entries read against fourteen pages of outside counsel guidelines. Three fixed, one flagged, nobody reading line by line.

The advisory firm track

• RIA back office automation: the six workflows (2:31). The six jobs that grow with the book, in the order they give hours back, with two of them shown end to end.
• How to auto-fill custodian forms from your CRM (2:39). Two forms, forty-two fields, eleven facts already in the CRM. One field left empty on purpose.
• How to turn a client meeting into CRM notes (2:21). A forty minute review becomes a note in the firm's format, four dated tasks, a logged recommendation, and a draft the advisor sends herself.

Frequently asked questions