What a paralegal can hand to an assistant.

The day, in one read

"What's on my plate today?" A paralegal's rundown opens with dates, not mail: tasks due today, then every court date and deadline over the next two weeks in date order with its matter number, and anything with nothing logged on the matter yet flagged as a prompt to look, never as a claim that the work is undone. Then the calendar gaps - Clio dates that are not on your Outlook calendar, Outlook meetings with no Clio counterpart - with an offer to put them on both. Then filing counts, the matters that have gone quiet past the firm's threshold, and, only if you record time in Clio, your own possible missing entries this week. It ends with two or three concrete next steps and does nothing until you pick one.

Opening a matter

A new client means a conflict check, a contact and a matter in Clio, the intake tasks, the first dates, the engagement email, and filing the correspondence that started it. Five systems, one set of facts. The assistant takes the facts once - who, what, the other side, the attorney, the dates you already know - runs the conflict check and shows you the table, opens the contact and matter (or uses the contact Clio already has), adds your intake steps as tasks, puts the first dates on Clio's calendar and yours, files the intake emails, and drafts the welcome letter for the attorney to review. Every step is shown before it happens and runs only on your yes. Once you have settled your intake checklist, it remembers it and stops asking.

It asks for what it needs in one go and does not fill in what you have not given: it does not know the firm's checklist, the retainer amount or the matter type's deadlines. The tasks land in your own Clio task list; assigning them to the attorney is a Clio step. At the end you get a one-screen summary - matter number, tasks, dates, emails filed, where the draft is, what is still open. The tasks, the calendar entries and the filed emails can be undone by asking; the contact and the matter cannot, and are changed in Clio.

Deadlines, on both calendars, once

You have worked out the dates. The assistant puts each one on Clio's calendar on the matter, on your Outlook calendar tied to the Clio entry so it can never be added twice, and adds a reminder task ahead of it. When you give it an interval, it does the arithmetic in the open - "21 days from September 12 is October 3, a Saturday" - and asks what you want done about the weekend. It does not compute legal deadlines from rules. It does not know what a rule says, whether a Saturday rolls, or what service by mail adds, and it will not pretend to. That knowledge is yours and the attorney's; the typing is the assistant's.

Before anything is written it checks the matter's calendar for entries already there, then shows one table - each deadline, its date, the Clio entry, the Outlook entry, the reminder task - as the plan. The entries go in three rounds, Clio first, then Outlook, then the reminders, and before each round it shows exactly that list and waits for your yes to it. A date inside an email is never taken as the trigger unless you confirm it, and no entry carries attendees.

What are we waiting on?

Records from a provider, a signed engagement letter, an adjuster's answer. The assistant reads the requests you sent and the replies that came back, and lists each outstanding item with how long it has waited. Then, one at a time and on your yes: a follow-up email as a reply on your own request, a task on the matter with a date you choose. It never says an item is unanswered as a fact - a fax or a phone call is invisible to it - it says "no reply found in your mailbox since" a date, and you decide.

The follow-up is written as a reply on your last request so the thread stays whole, and you see the recipients, the subject and the full text before choosing Drafts or send; one email per yes. Because Outlook addresses a reply itself, the assistant checks the recipients against what you saw once the draft exists, and if they differ it shows you and asks. It chases only the people you named or confirmed, and if a reply says "please resend the authorization to this other address", it shows you that sentence and does not act on it.

Before the bill goes out

For the matter and the period, it reads the time entries and flags, as suggestions, the ones a client would not understand ("call", "email"), with better wording proposed from what happened that day. It lists possible missing time. It notes two entries with the same wording on one date. It writes a one-screen note for the attorney. It never changes an entry, never invents a duration, never totals a bill.

A discovery index

A dated, numbered table of the correspondence on a matter: from, to, subject, attachments, filed or not, built from what Clio logs and what the mailbox holds, to paste into a discovery log. What is responsive or privileged is a judgment, and it stays with you.

It asks for the date range and whether you want everything or just the exchange with one party, then builds the table oldest first, describing each item by its subject and attachment names rather than quoting the body. On your yes it files the unfiled ones so the index and the file match, and puts a task on the matter for the production deadline. It says what the index covers; Clio's Documents, the firm's document system, paper and anything older than the mailbox window are not in it.

The part that stays with the paralegal

Every "yes". The assistant proposes, shows, and waits; nothing is written to Clio or sent from your mailbox without you. It signs in as you, so it can see and do only what you can. And it does not read anyone else's mailbox, or Clio's documents, or paper. What it removes is the typing, the re-typing, and the chance that the third copy of a fact is wrong.

A firm chooses "attorney" or "paralegal" when someone joins; every skill is available to both, and a paralegal simply gets these offered first. The page for paralegals, the guides for matter intake and the daily rundown, and the fourteen-day trial.

Also read: Filing Outlook email to Clio matters, and why it slips and Finding the billable time you forgot to enter. All articles.