Author: legalboardsdev

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the anatomy of a card within Legalboards. We’ve heard from our users that knowing every aspect of the card’s features can be overwhelming, and we’re here to help with that! Before we get started, let’s go over the basics of a Kanban board and why they can be beneficial to lawyers. 

Please note, if you’re a visual learner, there is a video summary at the end of this guide.

What’s a Kanban Board?

In our Anatomy of a Board guide, we walk you through both the basics of a Kanban board and boards within Legalboards. You can read more about that here.

To give you a basic understanding of a Kanban board, it’s important to understand that Kanban boards can be extremely simple. At their most basic stage, they can reflect on the progress of a project in terms of what needs to be done, what’s currently being worked on, and what has been completed.

As such, the columns on a board are usually the phase/stage of the work and cards are the task, matter, etc., that fits into that phase. 

The Basics of a Card

If a card reflects the work that needs to be done, for legal teams, cards can reflect matters with sub-tasks within that matter. In Legalboards, cards can hold a lot of important information and we’ll talk a bit about that now.

There are three types of cards- contacts, notes, and matters. Contacts and note cards are helpful for organizing specifics of your workflow. For example, note cards can be used to denote important information to your team. By pinning note cards within a column, you can easily communicate considerations for that specific phase. Matter cards are the most common type, and what we will primarily focus on within this guide.

Whenever you open a card, you’ll see one of two things. If you have a checklist attached to the card, you’ll see that, but if you do not, you’ll see the details of the card. You can see this in the image below. It’s also important to note here that checklists are only for within Legalboards, it will not be shown in your case management software.

In the details, you’ll see everything about your card. This includes:

• Client name and contact information
• Practice area
• Key dates: open, pending, limitation, and closing dates
• Description
• Responsible Attorney
• Originating Attorney
• Related contacts
• And Any custom information you want

There is also the option to show/hide unanswered fields so you can see only what is appropriate for this card.

Card Menu

To the left of any card is a menu that helps organize different aspects of a card. Here, you’ll see the name and number of the matter (based on your integration data) and what column the card is in. Next, you’ll see the label attached (denoted by the color) and a few buttons.

The first button is how to open your integrated case management, in our example is Clio, “start a timer”, new task, task board, export card, and copy card link. You’ll also see the “Edit Matter” button or the link for the integrated tool to open the same matter.

From there, the tabs give you options. The overview tab is to see the card details and checklist. The timeline tab lets you view the activity of this card- it will break down movements, automations, and detail changes. You can also filter the timeline by activity.

Next, we have time entry. This is where you can start a time entry and keep track of those entries as related to this specific card. Then you have activities.

Next is tasks. This is where you can see the work that needs to be done for this matter and their due dates. You can also see the list of completed tasks by hitting the show completed tasks button. You can also click on the task directly to see more information about it. When clicked, the task will show the assignee, reporter, date, description, checklist, and work logs (time entries).

Depending on your integrations, there are also notes, communications, payments, documents, and Docuplayer. Each of those gives you more information about an aspect of a matter. For example, LawPay integration users will see information about their billing and invoicing in the payments tab.

Board View: Card Navigation

An easy option to view more information and edit cards is directly within your board view. When looking at your board, you can click on the three dots on the right side of a card to quickly make changes.

By clicking on the three dots, 6 options will appear. You can edit the card or the members, archive or delete the card, pin the card to the top, or duplicate the card.

If you click “edit card”, you can edit the title, subtitle, and apply a label. Labels help designate the current status of the card. If you click on “edit members” you can directly edit the card members. If you need more help with managing board members, please refer to this guide. When you add new members, you’ll see both of their tiles on the card.

Archiving a card means the card will be greyed out and added to the archived card column. Deleting a card however, means it is no longer viewable.

Summary

Check out this video summary of this content (with some more detailed examples) below. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at support@legalboards.com, use the chatbot in your account, or take out a support ticket here. If you have any questions about how boards work, check out our guide here, which should help you grasp more about organizing and managing your boards.

As announced at Clio Con 2022, Legalboards is one of the first embedded apps within the Clio interface. This guide is to help users make the most of this integration and to help with some of the issues that have arisen for users since the launch of this feature.

Check out the video below to see how the embedded integration works and read on for the benefits of using this feature and how to solve common issues.

Why Use This Feature?

Simply put, the three main benefits of using this feature are:

1. Customization to your workflow so you can provide more detail;
2. Organizing your tasks with Kanban; and
3. Automating your tasks so you can save time.

Customize Your Work

We know that tasks can be more than just labeled “outstanding” or “completed”. With Legalboards, you can create custom task statuses (read more here). By using the Legalboards tab in Clio, now you can create and use these statuses directly within Clio. 

Kanban As A Visual Tool

It’s pretty well-known how much we love Kanban boards as a visual tool. They’re a great way to see an overview of your workflow at a glance.

Traditionally, your tasks in Clio have looked like this:

By using the Legalboards tab within Clio, you can now see exactly how your tasks are progressing. As you can see below, how your boards appear in Legalboards is now viewable in Clio.

Use Automation To Save Time

Reduce the time you spend on repetitive tasks with the Legalboards automation capabilities. With us, you can automate email communication with both internal and external contacts. Both clients and team members can stay updated on the progression of tasks/matters.

With automation, it’s also possible to work more efficiently through the creation of task chains. To learn more about task-chain automation, check out our blog post.

Important Things to Note

To get the most out of this feature, it’s important to note the following;

• Automations (and custom statuses) need to be made in Legalboards first. This is so they can then be shown in Clio once saved.
• To see more information about a task, click on the task directly. Then you can see the assignee, reporter, status, date, and time entries associated with the task.
• Data is automatically synchronized between Clio and Legalboards, so you don’t need to input information twice.

Common Issues and Questions

Since launching this feature, we’ve heard from users about common issues or questions about this feature. 

1. Recently Created or Changed Statuses

If you’ve recently created or changed one of the statuses in Legalboards, you may need to refresh your page in Clio to see that new column reflected in the interface.

2. Task Creation Visibility

Some users have reported that they’ve created a task in Clio and when they immediately enter the “Legalboards” tab, it may not be visible. This happens because both platforms may need a moment to sync the information between the two. For now, this is just a matter of time for the task to be created in Clio and Legalboards and then be visible.

Still Need Some Help?

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Check out our support portal, YouTube channel, or contact us for more help.

In this short guide, we’ll walk you through how to use advanced task filters. Filters can help you easily find valuable information, and the advanced filters on your task board will help you navigate your current tasks.

You’re likely familiar with how useful they can be in other programs to search for information that’s relevant to your current task or for your case. Let’s start with a quick refresher on how to set up a filter.

Setting Up Filters in Legalboards

Creating filters is easy, just follow these steps:

1. Click the “Add Filters” button at the top of your board
2. Select what information you want to set up a filter- for example, it can be by keyword, assignee, reporter, label, etc.
3. Select the “Save This Filter” button to save your selections.

If you need more help on how to create a filter within a board- check out this guide all about creating board filters.

Advanced Filters In The Task Board

Now that we’re familiar with how to set up a filter in Legalboards, let’s look at the advanced task filters that you can use with your task board. If you’re more of a visual learner, check out the video below.

First, let’s go to your task board. Here you can see all of your tasks sorted by their status. To filter this board, we’re going to click on the “Filter By” button at the top of the board, as shown below.

When we click on this button, a sub-menu will appear that allows us to set up a filter, similar to the other board filters. For the task board however, we have some more options for filtering like dates, status, and priority.

For this example, we want to filter by any date but with specific assignees. We’re going to select two assignees (Legalboards Admin and Rafael Miranda) and select the “Filter Now” button.

Please note, the speed results appear may vary by the amount of cards the system has to filter through.

In our example, we’ve filtered by these basic parameters around who is the assignee of these tasks. But, say we really want to focus on the high-priority tasks from these assignees so we can see the status of these tasks.

We can do this by clicking the “Filter By” button again to re-open the sub-menu. From here, we’re going to select “High” in the drop-down menu for the Priorities field and then click “Filter Now”.

Saving The Filter

Similar to saving a board filter, we can easily save this new filter of specific assignees and high priority by entering back into the menu through the “Filter By” button. From here, simply click the “Save This Filter” button and name the filter to save it for future use.

To clear the filters you have, simply click the “Clear All Filters” button.

Need More Help?

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Check out our support portal, YouTube channel, or contact us for more help!