Automating Legal Time Capture: A Guide for Clio Users

For small law firms in the U.S. and Canada, every minute counts. But in 2025, timekeeping is still a manual task for most legal professionals. Despite using modern tools like Clio, attorneys and staff spend hours each week reconstructing their days, reviewing emails, and estimating time spent on tasks to get paid. The result? Missed billables, frustrated lawyers, and hidden administrative costs that quietly chip away at profitability. But here’s the good news: email time capture no longer needs to be manual. Automation has arrived. In this guide, we’ll explore how Clio users can automate legal time capture for emails, why automation leads to more accurate billing and better productivity, and how tools like Tempello are helping firms gain back billable hours without changing how they work.

The Hidden Cost of Manual Time Tracking

Manual time tracking is a major inconvenience, and it adds up fast. According to the Legal Trends Report by Clio (2023), the average lawyer bills only 2.5 hours per 8-hour day. This “utilization gap” is often due to inefficient timekeeping rather than a lack of client work.

Common Issues Include:

Reconstructive Billing: Lawyers try to remember how much time they spend on each task, often days later.
Lost Billables: Emails, quick calls, or short research tasks that go unrecorded.
Staff Burnout: Admin time spent tracking billables, entering time into Clio, and reviewing invoices.
Inconsistent Habits: Some attorneys track time diligently, while others procrastinate or forget.

This creates an inconsistent, error-prone process that leaves money on the table.

How Clio Helps (But Doesn’t Solve Everything)

Clio is one of the most popular practice management platforms for small and midsize law firms and for good reason. It centralizes case data, manages documents, tracks billable hours, and simplifies invoicing. But when it comes to time tracking, Clio’s features still rely on you to start the clock or manually input time entries. Yes, Clio offers:

Timers for tasks and calls
Time entry fields linked to calendar events or communications
Reporting tools for billable vs. non-billable hours

However, these tools are only as valuable as the habits of the people using them. For busy legal professionals juggling multiple matters, remembering to log time in real time is often unrealistic. This is where Clio users hit a ceiling that automation can help lift.

What Is Automated Legal Time Capture?

Automated time capture refers to software that records your billable activity in the background. It can detect tasks like reading or writing client emails, reviewing documents, or attending meetings, then logs the associated time to the correct matter in Clio. The result? Less time spent tracking time, and more time spent practicing law.

Benefits Include:

Accuracy: No more rounding up or underestimating.
Efficiency: Time entries are logged automatically—no more chasing them down.
Transparency: Every task has a time log attached, making invoices easier to justify.
Increased Revenue: Law firms using automation report capturing 20–30% more billable time.

Meet Tempello: Timekeeping Without the Hassle

Tempello is purpose-built for small law firms using Clio. It’s not just another time tracker; it’s a full automation layer that connects email activity to the right legal matters and automatically turns that data into billable entries in Clio.

How Tempello Works:

Connect Your Email: Tempello syncs securely with your email (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365).
Map to Clio Matters: Using AI and metadata, Tempello matches each email to the correct matter in Clio.
Log Time Automatically: Each email read or written is converted into a time entry and synced to Clio without manual input.
Review or Adjust Entries: You remain in control. You can review, edit, or approve entries before they’re finalized.

No Timers. No Screen Monitoring. No Admin Overload. No Missed Hours.

Firms using the Tempello report:

3+ hours saved per week per person

20%+ increase in monthly billings
Happier staff with less administrative burden

Why This Matters for Small Law Firms

If your firm has fewer than 30 people, you likely wear multiple hats: lawyer, admin, marketer, and IT support. You don’t have time to waste on low-value tasks like time entry.

Here’s what automation means for your firm:

Challenge	Traditional Workflow	With Tempello
Missed billables from short emails	You forget to log 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there	Every email interaction is logged
Manual entry into Clio	Takes 2–3 hours/week	Takes 85% less time
Pressure to “pad” hours to meet quotas	Risk of inaccuracy	Data-backed entries you can trust
Staff burnout and turnover	Admin fatigue builds up	Workflows feel lighter, and morale improves

Automation isn’t just about saving time—it’s about changing the economics of your legal practice.

Security and Privacy: What About Client Confidentiality?

Understandably, lawyers are wary of tools that interact with confidential information. Tempello was built with legal-grade security in mind:

End-to-end encryption
Minimal data storage—only metadata is used for processing
No human review of content
Direct integration with Clio via their API
Role-based access for team members

Tempello doesn’t read, store, or share the content of your emails. It simply generates accurate time records based on activity metadata, and deletes.

A Real-World Example: How Automation Increased Monthly Billables

Let’s take a hypothetical small law firm of 10 attorneys, using Clio. Before Tempello:

Average billable per attorney/day: 2.4 hours
Average admin time for time entry: 3 hours/week
Monthly billables: $192,000 (8 billable hours x 2.4 x 20 days x 10 attorneys x $400/hour)

After Tempello:

Billable per attorney/day: 3.0 hours (25% increase)
Admin time recovered: 3 hours/week per attorney.
Monthly billables: $240,000

Result: +$48,000/month in additional revenue—without hiring, increasing workload, or changing tools.

How to Get Started with Tempello (in Minutes)

Starting your free 7-day trial is quick and easy:

Schedule a setup call at Tempello.ai to activate your trial.
We’ll connect your email and Clio account securely during the call.
Tempello handles the rest—entries begin syncing in Manual Mode so you can start by reviewing time entries before they go live.

Once you switch to Automatic Mode, you’ll start seeing time entries appear in Clio, tied to the right matters, without lifting a finger.

The Future of Legal Time Tracking Is Invisible

We’re entering an era where the billable hour is no longer a burden. Lawyers stay locked in on their valuable work—while automation captures every minute behind the scenes. This isn’t just convenient for small firms, it’s a competitive advantage. It means:

Capturing more of the work you already do
Delivering accurate and transparent invoices
Freeing up your team for higher-impact tasks
Improving cash flow without increasing pressure

The legal field is notoriously slow to adopt new technology, but the ROI here is too compelling to ignore.

Conclusion: Stop Tracking Time. Start Capturing Productivity.

Manual time tracking is a relic from a less efficient era. With tools like Tempello, small law firms using Clio can reclaim lost time, improve billing accuracy, and let attorneys focus on law, not logs. The best part? You don’t have to change how you work. You just connect to Tempello and let it do the tracking.

Ready to capture more billable hours without capturing more stress?

Start your journey with Tempello today.