Home / Law Firms / Daily email + calendar activity to draft Clio time entries
Law Firms problem 3: Billable time slips away because nobody writes it down
Daily email + calendar activity to draft Clio time entries
Every weekday evening the workflow reads the day's Clio calendar and your sent Outlook mail, matches each item to exactly one open matter, and adds unbilled draft time entries in Clio marked '[Auto-draft - review before billing]'. Anything it can't match safely is listed in a review email instead of guessed.
The problem
Time you don't record can't be billed. Clio's benchmarks show how little of the working day ends up as billable time.
- Clio's 2025 benchmarks: utilization of about 38%, roughly 3.0 billable hours in an 8-hour day. Source: Clio blog: How to find bottlenecks in your law firm (2025 Legal Trends benchmarks) (Vendor blog citing its own report data; read via search excerpt)
Who it's for
Solo and small-firm attorneys on Clio and Microsoft 365 who bill hourly and reconstruct their time at the end of the week.
Tools and monthly cost
| Tool | Official price |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 / Outlook mailbox (you probably already have it) | Reading your own mail through Microsoft Graph has no extra charge pricing page |
| Clio Manage (you probably already pay for it) | Starter from $49 / user / month; Core, Signature and Elite are quote-based. Make sure your plan includes API integrations (third-party guides report the entry plan does not). Matter stages are listed from Signature up pricing page |
| Resend (sends the emails) | Free: 3,000 emails / month, 100 / day. Pro: $20 / month for 50,000 pricing page |
| n8n | Community Edition: free if you self-host (you pay for the server). n8n Cloud: from EUR 20 / month (Starter) or EUR 50 (Pro) pricing page |
Example month: Illustrative: about 20 working days, one review email a day = 20 emails (Resend free). No AI model and no extra subscription, so the added cost is n8n only (free self-hosted or EUR 20 Cloud).
Setup
- Create a Clio API app with read access to Calendars, Matters and Contacts and write access to Activities; connect it in an n8n OAuth2 credential. Put your Clio user id in CLIO_USER_ID and your calendar id in CLIO_CALENDAR_ID.
- Register an app in Microsoft Entra ID with the delegated Mail.Read permission and connect it in an n8n Microsoft OAuth2 credential (replaces GRAPH_ACCESS_TOKEN).
- Set FIRM_EMAIL_DOMAIN (so internal emails are skipped), EMAIL_MINUTES (default 6 = 0.1 h per email) and ATTORNEY_EMAIL.
- Run it for one past day with the manual webhook and compare the drafts with what you would have billed before turning on the evening schedule.
Download
Download law-firm-time-capture.zip
Contains the n8n workflow, the mock data, the test runner with its last results, and the mock server we tested against. All keys in .env.example are fake.
Test result
Every workflow was imported into n8n 2.45.4 and run end to end on our test machine. Clio Manage (API v4), Clio Grow, the email sender (Resend), Outlook (Microsoft Graph), Twilio and Stripe were replaced by a local mock server built from their official API docs: it checks the same request shapes and required fields, enforces Clio's rate limit (HTTP 429) and records every call. These recipes use no AI model; every decision is a written rule you can read. Matters, clients and invoices are invented. Nothing was sent to a real phone, client or account. The billing recipe was also run once against a real Stripe test-mode sandbox (no money moves).
5/5 scenarios passed (run 2026-10-27)
| PASS | T1 | Busy Tuesday: 2 meetings + 2 client emails become draft entries; UTBMS matter, unmatched and internal email are handled safely |
| PASS | T2 | Re-running the same day creates no duplicates and sends no email |
| PASS | T3 | Monday: 24-minute call rounds up to 0.4 h but its matter needs UTBMS, so it goes to review; the evening email is drafted |
| PASS | T4 | Clio rate-limits a call (429): the run retries and finishes; an empty day sends nothing |
| PASS | T5 | Client with two open matters: the email is NOT guessed onto one, it is listed for review |
Actual output from the test run
Evening email to the attorney in scenario T1. Names and numbers are invented.
Draft time entries added to Clio (unbilled, marked "[Auto-draft - review before billing]"): - 00012-Gonzalez: 0.5 h - Call with Maria Gonzalez re: custody schedule - Review proposed 2-2-3 schedule - 00016-Natarajan: 1.5 h - Mediation prep - Natarajan deposit dispute - Outline damages, photos, lease clause 14 - 00012-Gonzalez: 0.1 h - Email to Maria Gonzalez: RE: custody schedule proposal - 00015-Chen: 0.1 h - Email to Robert Chen: Draft trust documents for your review Needs your call: - Email "Re: CLE registration" to Events - no matching open matter; add time by hand if billable. - 00017-Acme: "Email to Acme AP: Demand letter sent to Brightline Freight" (0.1 h) - matter needs a UTBMS task/activity code, enter it by hand. Edit or delete any draft in Clio (Activities > Time) before you generate bills.
Verified with mocks
- Calendar events linked to a matter become entries for their actual length, rounded up to 0.1 h; sent emails to a client with exactly one open matter become 0.1 h entries.
- Matters that require UTBMS codes, emails to clients with two open matters, unmatched recipients and internal emails go to the review email, not into Clio.
- Re-running the same day creates no duplicates and sends no email; an empty day sends nothing.
- Clio 429 rate-limit replies are retried.
Documented from official API docs only
Built to the vendor's documentation but not run against a live account. Check these on yours.
- Clio Manage API v4 activities (TimeEntry with quantity in seconds), calendar_entries and matters fields (from Clio's developer docs).
- Microsoft Graph sent-items query with sentDateTime filter (from Microsoft's docs).
Limitations
- Clio has no 'draft' state for time entries. Entries are created unbilled and labelled '[Auto-draft - review before billing]'; review or delete them before you bill.
- Email time is a flat amount per message, not the time you actually spent. Adjust EMAIL_MINUTES or edit entries.
- It reads up to 200 events, emails and matters per day (one page each); larger firms need pagination.
- Phone calls, document drafting and research outside email and calendar are not captured.
- These workflows are tools, not legal advice. Check your state's rules on advertising, client communication, trust accounting and texting before you turn one on.