Category: Automations

An automated case update workflow helps law firms reduce manual follow-ups, eliminate status confusion, and keep cases moving without constant check-ins.

Instead of relying on emails, spreadsheets, or verbal updates, this approach ensures that case status changes automatically when real work happens. As a result, teams gain visibility without adding extra tools or meetings.

In this guide, we show exactly how to build an automated case update workflow inside Legalboards, following the same step-by-step setup demonstrated in the video walkthrough below.Case updates are one of the biggest sources of hidden work inside law firms. Implementing an automated

This is not theory.

This is a practical, step-by-step setup you can replicate.

Watch the Full Walkthrough

How to Automate Case Updates in Legalboards

In this video, Bruna walks through:

• Creating an automation inside a Legalboards workflow
• Defining triggers based on real case activity
• Automatically moving cases forward
• Generating the next steps without manual follow-up

Use the video alongside the steps below to follow along.

What This Automation Solves

Before diving into the setup, it’s important to understand what this automation is designed to solve.

In most law firms, case updates are not missing. Rather, they are scattered across tools, people, and inboxes. Because of that, teams spend time searching for information instead of acting on it.

As workflows grow more complex, this fragmentation leads to manual follow-ups, repeated questions, and late discoveries of blocked cases. Ultimately, automation should reduce this friction, not create more noise.

The goal here is simple: when something happens in a case, the workflow updates itself and everyone sees the same status immediately.

Step 1: Start With a Clear Workflow Board

Automation only works if the workflow is clear.

Inside Legalboards, Bruna starts with a board that represents the real stages of a case, not vague statuses.

Example stages:

• Intake received
• Documents requested
• Documents received
• Filed
• Waiting on response
• Follow-up required
• Completed

Each column represents a decision point, not just a label.

Best practice:

If you can’t explain what moves a case from one column to the next, automation will fail.

Step 2: Identify the Automation Trigger

In the video, Bruna shows how to create an automation based on a specific trigger.

A trigger is the event that proves progress happened.

Common triggers include:

• A card is moved to a specific column
• A task is marked as completed
• A document is received or uploaded
• A deadline is reached or approaching

Example from the workflow:

When a case card is moved to “Documents Received”, that action becomes the trigger.

This is critical:

Automation should respond to work, not assumptions.

Step 3: Define the Automated Action

Once the trigger is clear, the next step is defining what should happen automatically.

In Legalboards, Bruna configures actions such as:

• Creating the next required task
• Assigning it to the correct role
• Setting a due date based on rules
• Moving the case to the next stage
• Sending an internal notification if needed

Example:

When documents are received:

• Create a “Review documents” task
• Assign it to the responsible paralegal or lawyer
• Set a due date automatically
• Move the case forward in the workflow

This removes manual decision-making from repetitive work.

Step 4: Use Roles, Not People

One important detail Bruna highlights is using roles instead of specific names.

Instead of assigning tasks to “Sarah” or “John”:

• Assign tasks to “Assigned Paralegal”
• Or “Responsible Lawyer”

Why this matters:

• Staff changes don’t break automations
• Workload stays balanced
• The workflow scales as the firm grows

This is a small setup choice with a big operational impact.

Step 5: Automate Case Movement Carefully

Not every automation should move a case automatically.

Bruna shows how to:

• Move cards automatically only when the next step is guaranteed
• Leave manual movement when judgment is required

Good rule:

If a human still needs to decide, don’t automate the move.

Legalboards lets you automate selectively, so control stays with the team.

Step 6: Add Safeguards and Visibility

Automation should surface risk, not hide it.

In the workflow shown:

• Deadlines are visible on the board
• Overdue tasks are clearly flagged
• Bottlenecks appear instantly
• Partners can see status without asking

This is where automation and visibility work together.

The result:

Paralegals stop acting as human dashboards.

Partners stop chasing updates.

Real Example: What Changes After This Automation

Before:

• Case updates required emails or meetings
• Tasks were created manually
• Follow-ups depended on memory
• Status questions interrupted the team daily

After:

• Case status updates itself
• Next steps are created automatically
• Deadlines are enforced by the system
• Everyone sees the same truth in real time

The work doesn’t change.

The friction disappears.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Automating a Broken Workflow

If the process is unclear, automation will make it worse.

Fix the workflow first.

Over-Automating Decisions

Automation should handle routine steps, not professional judgment.

Treating Automation as “Set and Forget”

Review automations quarterly as workflows evolve.

When This Type of Automation Makes Sense

This setup is ideal for:

• Immigration
• Family law
• Personal injury
• Litigation support
• High-volume, process-driven practices

Anywhere the same steps repeat across cases, automation pays off fast.

How Legalboards Supports This

Legalboards was designed to:

• Model real legal workflows
• Automate repetitive steps
• Keep humans in control
• Provide real-time visibility across all cases

It integrates with tools like Clio, MyCase, Outlook, Google Calendar, DocuSign, and Dropbox, so automation fits into your existing stack.

Talk through your workflow directly:

https://website-backend.legalboards.com/schedule-a-call/

Final Takeaway

Automation is not about speed.

It’s about consistency and visibility.

If your firm still relies on people to remember what happens next, this is exactly the type of workflow automation you should be building.

Watch the video.

Replicate the setup.

Adjust it to your practice.

That’s how automation actually works in a law firm.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to use the New Matter automation so you can save time while creating new matters. No matter if you use Legalboards by itself or are integrated with one of our case management software partners like Clio, MyCase, Filevine, or Practice Panther, you can use this automation to handle these tedious tasks.

If you’re more of a visual learner, check out the video below or on YouTube. Otherwise, let’s get into it!

Step 1: Setting Up New Automations

To get started, you’ll need to click on “My Automations”. Here, you’ll see all of the current automations that are set up for the selected board. To set up another one, click on the “New Automation” button.

Now, you’ll see the sub-menu of automation recipes. Click on the “Create New Matter Card” tile to set this automation up. Once clicked, you’ll see the screen below.

Step 2: Set Filters

Next, let’s populate these filters. Automations follow the basic pattern of “if this happens, then that”. For the new matter automation, these fields tell Legalboards what to do when a new matter is created.

You’ll see the fields “Client”, “Practice Area”, “Originating Attorney”, “Responsible Attorney”, and “Filter by Custom Field”. For this example, we want to create a new matter card without any of these filters so every new matter has a new card, so we’ll keep these fields blank and go to selecting which column the new card will be added to.

If you wanted to use specific filters, you could set this automation to only be used for a specific practice area, attorney, or some other custom field. So, you could create a board for Family law cases, if you have a large volume of cases from a specific client, or by using the custom fields, you could use this automation for Family law cases that are designated as divorce cases.

Step 3: Choose A Column

The next step is to specify which column of a board these new matter cards will be added to. In our example, we want the new cards to be shown in the intake column, so we’ll specify that. With that selection, we can click on the “Save Automation” button to save this new automation.

Now that it’s saved, we’ll be able to see this recipe in our overview. You could use this automation for all of the boards you have and use specific filters to define each matter that should be added to each of your boards. Depending on the organization of your boards, this can be especially useful for overlapping matters or showing both a micro and macro view of your firm’s operations.

Still Need Some Help?

Check out our resources section for more guides, check out our YouTube channel for video tutorials, or contact us at support@legalboards.com.

Some events are bound to happen- especially as your cases progress. That’s why we’ve added the new event automation that works directly within Clio for automated events on your calendar.

In this guide, we’ll go over how to use the new automation within Legalboards. If you’re more of a visual learner, check out the video below to see how the new event automation works. 

Please also note, this automation is only available for users that have integrated their Clio accounts. Visit our support portal for information about how to integrate.

Getting Started

Like our other automations, creating this follows the same steps of selecting some parameters and a trigger. To learn more about automation in Legalboards, check out this article.

To view the automations on a board, simply click the “My Automation” button. Here, we can see all of the automations for the current board we’re using organized by the board’s columns. In the case that your board has multiple automations, you can also filter these by the action, trigger, or keyword.

Creating The Automation

To create a new automation, we’ll click the “New Automation” button, as shown below.

From here, the sub-menu will appear with options to create a new automation. Now we’re going to select “Create Event”. We can select one of the three triggers (card movement, time, and Clio task update). For this example, let’s focus on using the card movement trigger. Using either of the other two triggers can help create automated events based on completing a task or a follow-up based on elapsed time.

We’ll select “Card Movement” as our trigger and specify movement from the “Waiting Forms” column to the “Assessment” columns for when we want to set up a call between the firm and clients. Then we’ll keep the filter to be for all cards.

Specifying Details About Your Event

We’ll need to specify some information about the event that we want to be automatically created based on the card’s movement. Calendar automation can be especially helpful when we want to set up an event based on case progression.

In this example, we want to create an event 2 days after the card has been moved. To do this, we’ll need to specify whose calendar this event is going to be created for, our period between the task being updated and the event creation, and the timing and summary, description, and attendees of the event.

For the attendees, we have a selection of options, and you can choose more than one. For this example, we’ll choose “Related Contact”, “Matter’s Responsible Attorney”, and “Client’s Email” as the parties we would like to attend this event, as shown below.

Once we’ve filled out all of the fields, we can save this automation and start benefitting from using it. Automated events are helpful for meetings we know need to happen after certain triggers and can be attended by both internal and external parties.

Need Some More Help?

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

We’ve heard your requests and have added a new automation that allows you to update the status of your tasks based on the trigger you choose. By using this new automation, you can reduce your backlog of work by automatically updating your task’s statuses.

If you’re more of a visual learner, check out the video walkthrough below.

How To Set Up the Task Status Update Automation

To get started, let’s select the board we want to use this automation in. We’ll then select the “Automations For This Board” option in the toolbar. From there, we’re going to select “Update Task” from the menu (see below). When we select “Update Task”, another screen will appear with a “New Automation” button.

Click on the “New Automation” button to see the screen below. Now, we will select which of the triggers we want to use to set up the automation. If you’re unsure of which trigger to pick, you can learn more about automation triggers here.

For this example, we’re going to use the “Card Movement” trigger. Once we’ve selected it, we can specify the “Drag From” and “Dropping To” fields. We’re going to choose the Term Sheet option for “Drag from” and the Due Diligence option for “Dropping To”. Once we’ve specified those we have the option of also picking a filter. For this example, we’ll leave this and move on to the third step.

The third set of fields will be where we set the task status update. As shown below, we’re using Clio as our source, have given the task the title “term sheet signature” to the task, and have selected “complete” as the status update.

Once we have specified those fields, we can click on the “Save” button to save our automation details. Now that we’ve set up that automation it will appear in the list of automations for the board and is ready to be used!

Task Status Update Automation in Action

Please note, when the card movement happens, a yellow warning will appear on the card that gives you the option of cancelling or keeping the automation. When the card is in it’s new column, we can now click on the card then on “Tasks” within the sub-menu and see the task as completed (as illustrated below).

Examples of Use

This automation prevents tasks from being left behind with the wrong status, which can be particularly helpful if someone forgot to update the status of their tasks. Here are some examples of how the automation could be implemented:

• Trigger card movement: Whenever a matter moves from one column to the next in your workflow the system will automatically update the status of previous tasks to complete. In the example above, all matters arriving in the “Due Diligence” should have their term sheet signed already. Therefore, if someone forgot to mark this task as completed the system will automatically do that.
• Trigger task update: You can set up this automation based on another task update. Often users have tasks (“task X”) that can only be completed if a certain task (“task Y”) was completed prior. If a user has completed both tasks on the same day or if someone completed task Y before and forgot to update the status, with this automation they will only have to update the status of one task and the other will be automatically updated.
• Trigger time: If you have a task that is necessarily completed or no longer relevant, after a certain period of time you can set up an automation to update its status based on a time frame.

Still Need Some Help?

Didn’t find what you needed? Learn more about automation in Legalboards here, check out more videos, or visit our support portal for more help with creating automations.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up our newest automation action: Checklist Creation. This automation will allow you to automate your task checklists. By setting this automation, you and your firm will be able to save time and become more efficient.

If you’re more of a visual learner, check out our video guide below for the step-by-step process.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Rury1LlG4%3Fcontrols%3D1%26rel%3D0%26playsinline%3D0%26cc_load_policy%3D0%26autoplay%3D0%26enablejsapi%3D1%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Flegalboards.com%26widgetid%3D1%26forigin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Flegalboards.com%252Fresources%252Fautomations%252Fautomation-action-checklist-creation%252F%26aoriginsup%3D1%26vf%3D1

The first step to automating a board is to choose which board is most appropriate and click on the “Automations for this board” icon. Overall, automations follow the same three steps of when, filter, and automate.

Creating the checklist creation automation will have the common steps of when and filter but the last step is to set up the checklist items.

Step 1: When

When the sub-menu appears, click on the “Create Checklist” category and the button “New Automation”. As with any automation in Legalboards, you’ll need to define your when or trigger action, which you can find more about triggers here.

Try to think of when the checklist creation is most appropriate for a task. You can specify the checklist creation automation to be triggered from a card movement, be time-based, or if you’ve integrated Clio into your account, based off a Clio task update.

Trigger Actions

The first type of trigger is card movement. If you choose this trigger, you’ll need to specify some categories which are covered in our card movement guide. Please note the categories of “drag from” and “dropping to” do not both need to completed, but at least one does need to be specified.

In our example, let’s specify the dropping to movement to be any card moving to the client intake column.

Step 2: Filter

In this section, we will need to assign any necessary labels as well as card types that should be associated with this automation.

In our example, we’re looking to create a checklist for client intake, so we will not specify any card types. This will mean any card entering the client intake column will trigger the same response.

Step 3: Create Checklist Items

From here, we just need to create the items for our checklist. We want to try and create a list of tasks that would cover the majority of actions needed.

In our example, let’s cover some basic tasks associated with a client intake. We’ll make our checklist consist of “open the client file”, “create the NDA model”, “start the initial billing”, and “create the draft contract”.

Once you’ve created your list items, be sure to hit the save button in order to complete the automation creation. Now when you click on the card, you can see the checklist items and will be able to check off the items as they are completed.

If you need more help check out our support portal or YouTube channel for more video guides.

Create unique email notifications personalized to your team, clients, or external consultants by setting up email automation in Legalboards.

By creating “Send Email” automations, you can go beyond a simple template email notification. However, templates can still appear as spam in some inboxes- which is a problem we want to help you with.

Legalboards deals with your workflows, and as such, all of your tasks and contact information is integrated within the system. As a result, you can use the “Send Email” action in combination with triggers like card movement, pending time, or task update status and filters to create fully customized automation that’s appropriate for your tasks.

If you’re unsure of how automation works or what benefits it could provide, check out this article.

Getting Started

Now we’ll walk you through creating a “Send Email” automation. First, within Legalboards, find at the top right of your board page an icon called “Automations for this Board”. Click on that icon and choose the action “send email”.

You’ll need to configure your trigger (or when an automation will happen) and filter for your automation. From there, you can specify the sender and the receiver of the email as well as writing the content.

Let’s take look at how the fields related to the sender and receiver work:

• From: In this field, you will need to configure who is the sender of this email as well as what happens with any replies.
• To: This is the most crucial field, and you have several options. Let’s examine them one by one.

Specifying Your Fields

We’ll start by looking at the “To” field. The options for this field are:

• Matter’s responsible attorney: The email will be sent only to the matter cards, which have a responsible attorney and an email filled in.
• Matter’s originating attorney: The email will be sent only to the matters cards, which have an originating attorney and an email filled in.
• Client’s email: If the matters or contact card has an associated client email, this email will be sent to the client.
• Card`s members: The email will be sent to anyone who is a member of this card.

However, you are not limited to just one of these options for the “To” field. Multiple options can be chosen in order to customize this process for your specific needs.

Next, we’ll specify the “From” field where you’ll have the option to specify who will be receiving this email. You only have to choose one of your team members in any role- admin, members, or viewers.

You can see this in action in the video below;

Finally, you can customize the message that will be sent. You can specify the subject and content you want so you can send specific messages.

Email Automation in Action

Now that you know how to create an automation for the Send Email action, let’s look at some examples of the action in use:

1. General Workflow
   When a divorce matter arrives in the “Approval” column, an email will be sent to the client explaining the next steps on the divorce case workflow.
2. Accounting
   When a card stays more than 15 days in the “Billing” column, an email will be sent to the members of this card to alert them of case status.
3. Immigration
   When a card in the “Registration Form (Preparation)” column has a “Letter Preparation” task completed, an email will be sent to the responsible attorney.

If you still need more help check out our support portal for more resources or find more video guides here.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up a card movement automation trigger for increased productivity. This means that when a card moves columns, a trigger will be set and have an automated response.

Card movement automation triggers are easy to set up for daily use. By creating this trigger, you will see a significant change in how you manage your workflow.

Getting Started

In Legalboards, you can automate three types of actions (task creation, send email, and move card).

When you create an action with the card movement trigger, you create almost a supervisor for the board and its columns. The Legalboards system will monitor what happens in these columns and either manually or automatically, will activate the action you set up in this automation.

Automations are created in three steps: when, filter, and automate. Let’s take a look at the first and most important step in a little bit more detail. If you’re more of a visual learner also check out the video below.

Step 1: When

In Legalboards you can create automations for three different actions- move card, send email or task creation. When you create a new automation for those actions, you have a choice of what kind of trigger is best for you. If you need any help with your decision, check out this guide.

If you chose the card movement trigger as the most appropriate time for an automation to occur, you’ll then need to think about columns. The amount of columns can depend on your matter but you’ll have to specify which columns are related. These columns should represent the movement that you want the card to do automatically.

Types of Movement

The two types of card movement that need to be specified are “drag from” and “dropping to”;

• Drag from addresses what column the card belongs to before any movement. This selection is not mandatory, so if you decide to not select a column, “all columns” will be the default. That means no matter which column the card belonged to before movement, the action will only consider the new column for this card.

Please note that if you don’t determine a column to “drag from”, you must now specify a column in the “dropping to” field.

• Dropping to addresses what column a card is moving to. You’ll need to choose either a specific column or you can select “all columns”. If you decide to select “all columns, it means that regardless of which column this card will drop to, only the column it belonged to before matters.

Also note that when you don’t determine a column for the “dropping to” field, you must now specify a column in the “drag from” field.

What’s Next?

Hopefully, this has been easier than you may have thought. The process is fairly simple- you only need to specify one of two fields (“drag from” or “dropping to”) to start creating a new automation with the card movement trigger.

With that card movement trigger set up for the automation, you only need to set up the filter and automate to complete the action.

The use of the card movement trigger isn’t limited to only manual movements of cards. You can also combine this trigger with the “move card” action. Now, you won’t need to move cards one by one across the columns, you can create a chain of automation.

“Card Movement” in Action

To illustrate some of the capabilities of the card movement trigger, here are some example uses:

Divorce Board:
When cards from the column “Property Settlement Agreement” move to the next column called “File for master”, a new task named “Review Draft” is created.

Immigration Board:
When cards from “All Columns” move to the column called “Engagement Letter & PP”, a new task named “Create Draft Letter” is created.

General Workflow Board:
When a card moves to the “Billing” column, the same card will be created in a new board called “Accounting”. This cloned card will then be placed on the column named “Waiting for approval”.

Still Need Some Help?

If you still have any questions, check out our support portal or request a demo to contact our team.

An important part of a team leader’s role is to distribute and organize team members. A team leader has to address who’s doing what, when tasks need to be completed, and how to best complete the task. However, this doesn’t need to require a big time commitment when you use Legalboards for task automation. In this guide you’ll find help with creating tasks and how to start using task automations.

How to Create Task Automation in Legalboards

You’ll see at the top right of your board page an icon called “Automations for this board”. Click on the icon and choose the action: “Task Create” (or, if you use Clio integration- Task Clio Create) to create a new automation. To see this in action, check out the video below for an example using a divorce board. Task automations can be created in three simple steps:

1. Select and set up the automation trigger;
2. Filter which type of cards you want to automate; and
3. Configure the “who, what, and when” details of your tasks.

The final step is usually the most difficult one because of the number of fields that need to be completed. So, let’s look at the types of fields in more detail.

Types of Task Fields

Let’s take a look at each field we have in the automation process. We’ll start with the “Assignee” field which has several options to choose from:

• Matter’s Responsible Attorney: the task will be assigned only to the Matter Cards, which have a Responsible Attorney filled.
• Matter’s Originating Attorney: the task will be assigned only to the Matters Cards, which have an Originating Attorney filled in.
• Matter’s Client: If this card has a client in Clio Portal, this task will be assigned to this person. Please note that this option is also only available for accounts integrated with Clio.
• Card’s Members: the task will be assigned to anyone who is a member of this card.

You also have the option to specify who will be the fixed assignee for this task. You only have to choose one of your team members in any role- Admin, Members, or Viewers. In this “Assignee” field, you can also choose how many options you need, giving you the flexibility to build tasks tailored to your needs. Legalboards will verify which team members are the most able to complete the task for the due date. The task will then be assigned to that person within the platform. Next, we have the “Due In” field. This field focuses on the number of days after the trigger is actioned and if the task still needs to be completed. Finally, you can personalize the title and the description so the task can have detail about how the work needs to be done. Once this is complete, you’ve fully set up automated task creation! Now, team leaders can let Legalboards deal with allocating tasks through automation.

Specific Examples of Applications

If a more specific example of task creation helps, here are some examples of task automation in different boards:

• Account: when a new card arrives on the column “Waiting for Approval,” a task will be created for an invoice to be inputted into the billing system. Another task will be created for “Matter’s Responsible” in order to contact the client regarding payment dates. This helps to stay on top of billing and client matters.
• General Workflow– when a card stays more than 15 days in the column “Waiting,” a task will be created to “Matter’s Originating Attorney”. This helps to analyze time allocation through inspecting the overspent time for this matter.
• Divorce– when a “Draft Agreement” task is completed within a card on the column “Property Settlement Agreement,” another task will be created for one “Card Member” to review this agreement. This provides team members with updates on the matter and tasks associated.

Still Need Help?

Didn’t find what you needed? Learn more about automation in Legalboards here, check out more videos, or visit our support portal for more help with creating automations.

This guide covers how to create a move card automation action in Legalboards with examples of the automation in use.

With this action, your cards can automatically move within the same board and/or be created on a different board. This capability can significantly improve your productivity because of the clarity, collaboration, and synchronization it provides to your workflows.

If you want to learn more about automation or how agile methodologies can improve your practice’s workflows, check out some of our other resources or our YouTube channel for video guides of the Legalboards platform.

Getting Started

For the move card automation action specifically, the steps are as follows;

1. On any board, click on the automation button on the header where a tab with options will open. Select “move card”;
2. Set up a trigger (“when”) for the automation, and a filter; and
3. Select which board and column you want the action to happen in- which needs a bit more clarification.

Types of Movement

With the last step of the creation process, you can choose where you want the card to move.

The first option is “moves on this board” which will automatically move the card to another column within that same board.

The second option is “creates card in another board“, where the card will automatically be created in a different board in a specified column.

Either option allows you to organize chain events across boards. As tasks are completed for a work, the card movement will notify the relevant team members and depending on the type of movement, those members can create their own board. This allows you and your firm to work collaboratively and synchronized.

“Move Card” in Action

So, now that we’ve gone through how to create the action, let’s look at some example uses.

1. Divorce Board:
   When a task regarding “Review Draft” (can either be in the name or even just mentioned in the description), has its status updated to “Done”. Certain cards from the “Property Settlement Agreement” column will then be moved to the next column-“File for master”.
2. Immigration Board:
   When a Clio task regarding “Document Check” (can either be in the name or in description), has its status updated to “Done”. Certain cards from the “Initiate Case (Internally)” column will then be moved to the next column- “Case Identification”.
3. General Workflow Board:
   When a card lands in the “Billing” column, then it will create the same card in a new board called “Accounting”. The card will be placed in the “Waiting for Approval” column within that new “Accounting” board.
4. Lead Management Board:
   When a card stays for more than 30 days in the “Waiting Response” column, the system will move this card to the “Lost” column.

Still need a little bit more help? Check out our support portal or find more resources here for more information.