Clio document permissions: who can see what

User permissions are about what a person can do in the system by role — whether they can see billing, manage users, run reports, and so on — set by the permission tier their account is assigned. Matter access is about which specific matters a person can see. They combine: a user's role defines their general capabilities, and matter access defines the universe of matters those capabilities apply to. A paralegal might have broad document capabilities but only on the matters they're assigned to. Getting confidentiality right means thinking about both axes, not just one.

A restricted (or limited-access) matter is one where, instead of everyone in the firm being able to see it, only explicitly assigned users can. This is the mechanism for genuinely confidential work — a matter involving firm leadership, a sensitive internal investigation, a client who is also an employee, or any situation where the default 'all staff can see all matters' posture is wrong. The key operational point is to set the restriction when you create the matter, before any documents go in. Restricting a matter after sensitive documents have already been uploaded and possibly seen is closing the barn door late. Confirm exact steps and naming in Clio's help center.

The client portal (Clio for Clients) shares only the specific documents and folders you choose to publish to it — it is not a window into the whole matter. A client sees a document in the portal because someone deliberately shared it, not because it's in the matter, and external visibility is opt-in per item. Two opposite risks are worth holding at once. First, a shared folder keeps sharing: any document you add to a folder you've already published is shared automatically, so a privileged file dropped in later becomes visible the moment it lands. Second, the inverse — assuming a client can see something that was never actually published. If a client needs to see something, confirm it's published; if something must stay private, confirm it isn't sitting in a folder you've already shared.

Clio for Co-Counsel (formerly Clio Connect) is the built-in way to give an attorney who isn't a user in your Clio access to a matter. You can share the entire matter — which exposes matter details, the client's information, related contacts, notes, time entries, and communications, with no option to hide the client's information — or you can share only specific documents, folders, or bills, in which case they see just those. Documents and bills are shared separately from the matter itself, so for anything sensitive, share the individual items rather than the whole matter. Co-counsel receive an email invitation to a secure portal, can preview and download what you share and upload their own files, and access is revocable at any time. The sharing setting is administrator-only. Confirm current capabilities in Clio's help center, since availability and behavior vary by plan.

Yes — and this is the most common way documents get exposed without anyone meaning to. When you share a folder to the client portal, anything you add to that folder afterward is shared automatically, with no additional action and no prompt, so a privileged document dropped into a previously shared folder becomes visible to the client the moment it lands. If the set of documents is fixed, share the individual files instead of the folder; if you do share a folder, treat it as permanently visible to the client and never place anything in it you wouldn't hand over. Confirm the current behavior in Clio's help center.

Uploading sensitive documents to a matter before deciding who should have access to that matter — so for a window of time the documents sit in a matter that everyone in the firm can see. Because access is controlled at the matter level, the fix is to decide and set matter access first, then upload. The second most common mistake is the inverse of a back-channel: a document that's properly restricted in Clio also exists in a shared cloud folder or someone's email with broader access, so the Clio restriction is real but irrelevant. Confidentiality is only as strong as the most permissive place the document lives.

Both, independently — and that's the trap. Clio's restriction governs the copy in Clio; it has no reach over a copy sitting in a shared network folder, a cloud-storage site, or an email thread. If the same document exists in a more permissive location, the people with access there can see it regardless of how locked down the Clio matter is. This is why 'where else does this document live' is part of any real confidentiality decision. The cleanest discipline for sensitive material is to make Clio the single home and remove the other copies, so the matter's access control is the actual control, not a partial one.

A small number of trusted administrators, not everyone. Permission and access management is exactly the kind of capability that should be limited to firm leadership or a designated operations administrator, because the blast radius of a mistake — exposing a confidential matter, or locking the wrong people out of an active one — is high. For most firms, a couple of administrators who own user setup and matter-access decisions, plus a simple convention for when a matter should be restricted, is enough. The goal is that confidentiality decisions are made deliberately by people who understand them, not improvised by whoever happens to be setting up a matter.