| name | Clio Contacts |
| description | Use this skill when creating, updating, searching, or reasoning about Clio contacts — the people and companies connected to matters. Covers person vs. company contacts and the relationship between a contact and the matters they're party to (client, opposing party, witness, and other roles).
|
| when_to_use | When creating, updating, or searching for a Clio contact, or when figuring out how a contact relates to a matter. Use when: clio contact, clio person, clio company, clio client contact, clio opposing counsel, clio witness, or clio contact search. |
Clio Contacts
Overview
A contact in Clio is a person or a company. Contacts exist
independently of any single matter — the same contact can be the client on
one matter, opposing counsel on another, and a witness on a third. Tools:
clio_contacts_list, clio_contacts_get, clio_contacts_create,
clio_contacts_update. Navigate into the contacts domain first.
No delete tool exists for contacts — same rule as everywhere else in
this integration (see api-patterns). A contact
that's no longer relevant doesn't get removed through this integration.
People vs. Company Contacts
Clio contacts come in two shapes:
| Type | Examples | Notes |
|---|
| Person | An individual client, an opposing party who is a person, a witness, an individual attorney at another firm | Has first/last name fields |
| Company | A corporate client, an opposing party that's a business entity, a vendor | Has a company/organization name; may have associated people (e.g. a primary contact at the company) |
When creating a contact, get the type right up front — person vs. company
determines which fields are meaningful (a company doesn't have a
first/last name; a person isn't "incorporated"). If a user describes an
entity ambiguously ("Acme" could be a company or could be shorthand for a
person at Acme), ask rather than guess, especially before creating a new
contact — search first (see below).
Contact ↔ Matter Relationships
A contact's relationship to a given matter is contextual, not a fixed
property of the contact itself. The same contact record might be:
- Client — the party the firm represents on the matter (every matter
has exactly one client contact — see the
matters skill)
- Opposing party — the other side in the matter
- Witness — someone with relevant testimony or evidence, not a party
- Other matter-specific roles the firm tracks (co-counsel, expert,
guardian ad litem, etc.), depending on how the firm uses Clio
Don't assume a contact's role from one matter carries over to another —
the same person can be a client on one file and a witness on an unrelated
file. When summarizing "who's involved" in a matter, resolve the
relationship per-matter rather than trusting a contact's role from a
different context.
Searching Before Creating
Law firms accumulate large contact lists with overlapping names (multiple
"John Smith"s across different matters is normal, not a data quality
problem). Before calling clio_contacts_create:
- Search existing contacts (
clio_contacts_list with a name/company
filter) — check email address and company affiliation, not just name,
to disambiguate.
- If there's a plausible existing match, confirm with the user rather
than silently reusing it or silently creating a duplicate — both are
real failure modes in a system where contacts persist across many
matters and years.
- Only create a new contact once you're confident it doesn't already
exist.
Creating and Updating Contacts
- Person: first name, last name are the minimum meaningful fields;
email/phone are commonly expected for anyone who'll be communicated
with directly.
- Company: the organization name is the minimum; consider whether the
firm also wants a primary person contact linked at the company for
day-to-day communication.
- Updates (
clio_contacts_update) are scoped to a single contact ID —
send only the fields actually changing.
Contact data is comparatively low-sensitivity relative to matter content
(communications, documents), but it's still client PII — don't populate
fields with guesses, and don't merge/overwrite existing contact data
without the user's explicit intent.
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