Zapier Workflow: Auto-Create Matters in Clio or MyCase from Your Intake Form

What This Builds

A prospective client fills out your online intake form, and right now someone at the firm still opens Clio or MyCase and types the same name, phone number, and matter type in a second time. This automation closes that gap. Once it's live, a form submission creates the contact, the matter, and a follow-up task automatically, so the first person to touch the new lead is doing legal work instead of data entry.

Prerequisites

• An active Zapier account on at least the Basic plan (the free plan caps zaps at two steps and this build needs three or more, plus filters)
• A Clio or MyCase account with API access enabled (check your admin settings; some older plan tiers restrict integrations)
• An intake form tool already connected to Zapier, whether that's your practice management system's own intake form, or a separate tool like Typeform or JotForm
• Total ongoing cost: $29.99/month at minimum for the Basic tier, on top of whatever you already pay for Clio or MyCase and your intake form tool. Check each vendor's pricing page directly, since practice management pricing varies by firm size and add-ons.

The Concept

A zap works like a relay race between apps that don't otherwise talk to each other. One app hands off a baton (the trigger, here a form submission), Zapier carries it to the next app (the action, here creating a matter), and it can hand off again to a third (a task assignment) without anyone standing in the middle passing information by hand. You set the relay up once. After that, it runs every time a new lead comes in, whether you're at your desk or in a deposition.

Build It Step by Step

Part 1: Map the Data Before You Touch Zapier

1. Open your intake form and list every field it collects: name, phone, email, matter type, brief description, referral source.
2. Open Clio or MyCase and find the matching fields on a new contact and a new matter record. Note any field on the form that has no obvious home in the practice management system. That's where automations usually break, so flag it now.
3. Decide what should happen automatically versus what still needs a human: creating the contact and matter record is safe to automate, but assigning the file to a specific attorney or setting a fee agreement is a judgment call better left to a person.

Part 2: Build the Zap

1. In Zapier, create a new Zap. Set the trigger to your intake form's "new submission" event, or to Clio's or MyCase's own intake-related trigger if you're using their native form.
2. Add a Filter step right after the trigger: only continue if the required fields (name, matter type, contact method) are present. This stops a half-completed form from creating a broken matter record.
3. Add an action step for Clio or MyCase: create a new contact, mapping each form field to the matching contact field you identified in Part 1.
4. Add a second action step: create a new matter, linked to the contact just created, with the matter type and description pulled from the form.
5. Add a third action step: create a follow-up task assigned to your intake coordinator or yourself, due the next business day, so a human still reviews and moves the lead forward.
6. Turn on error notifications for this zap in Zapier's settings before you activate it. This is the step people skip and then wonder why a lead sat unnoticed for a week.

Part 3: Test With Fake Submissions

1. Submit two or three test entries through the actual form, using obviously fake names, and confirm the contact, matter, and task all appear correctly in Clio or MyCase.
2. Try one intentionally incomplete submission (skip a required field) and confirm the filter step catches it instead of creating a broken record.
3. Only after both tests pass, switch the zap from draft to live, and monitor the first week of real submissions closely.

Real Example: A Weekend Intake Form Submission

Setup: A family law solo practice connects a JotForm intake page to Clio through Zapier, with a filter requiring name, phone, and matter type before anything fires.

Input: A prospective client fills out the form Saturday evening asking about a custody modification.

Output: By Monday morning, the contact and a new matter labeled "Custody Modification Inquiry" already exist in Clio, with a task assigned to the intake coordinator due that day, no one having touched a keyboard over the weekend.

Time saved: Manual re-entry of a single intake typically runs 10-15 minutes. Across a busy solo practice fielding a handful of new inquiries weekly, that adds up to an hour or more reclaimed each week, and leads no longer wait until Monday for someone to notice the form came in.

What to Do When It Breaks

• The zap stops running silently and nobody notices for weeks → This is the failure you won't see coming. Zapier automatically deactivates a zap after enough consecutive errors, and without notifications turned on, it fails quietly while your intake form keeps collecting submissions nobody's routing anywhere. Check that error notifications are on, and spot-check the zap's task history in Zapier monthly even if nothing seems wrong.
• A matter gets created but the contact's phone number lands in the wrong field → Field mapping mismatches are the most common cause. Re-check that the form's field names line up with what Clio or MyCase expects, especially after either vendor updates their form builder.
• The zap creates duplicate matters for the same submission → This usually means the form is firing the trigger twice (a double form submission from a slow connection, for instance). Add a filter or a lookup step that checks for an existing contact with the same email before creating a new one.

Variations

• Simpler version: Automate only the contact creation step and leave matter creation as a manual task for the intake coordinator, if the firm wants a human eye on every new matter before it's officially opened.
• Extended version: Add a step that sends a welcome email through the firm's email platform once the matter is created, so the client gets an immediate acknowledgment instead of waiting for a callback.

What to Do Next

• This week: Map every field on your current intake form and confirm you know where each one should land in Clio or MyCase.
• This month: Build the zap in draft mode and run it against a week's worth of test submissions before switching it live.
• Advanced: Extend the same trigger to also run a conflict check search or notify the attorney by text for high-value matter types, using Zapier's filter and path features.

A Note on Confidentiality

An intake form usually collects a prospective client's name, contact information, and a description of their legal problem before an attorney-client relationship even exists, and that description can include sensitive facts about a divorce, a criminal charge, or a business dispute. Routing that data through Zapier means it briefly passes through a third-party server on its way to Clio or MyCase, so read Zapier's data processing terms and confirm your firm's engagement and privacy notices account for that before turning this zap on, and never map a free-text "describe your legal issue" field into a system that a non-attorney staff member can access without a business reason to see it.

Advanced guide for small firm attorneys. These techniques use more sophisticated AI features that may require paid subscriptions.