Practice-management systems tend to grow like attics. Users come and go, matters pile up, integrations get connected for a trial and never removed, and permissions drift from what anyone intended. A few hours of cleanup can make the platform faster to use and noticeably safer.
This guide uses Clio as the example because it is common among small and mid-size firms, but the same steps apply to MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball and similar tools. Check your own platform's settings for exact menu names.
Start With Users and Roles
Every account is a door. Begin by exporting or viewing the full user list.
- Remove or deactivate anyone who has left the firm. Do this the day they leave as a standing offboarding step, not once a year.
- Check for duplicate or generic accounts. Shared logins such as "frontdesk" make audit trails useless.
- Match roles to jobs. Attorneys, paralegals, billing staff and outside contractors rarely need identical access.
- Limit administrators. Two or three trusted admins are plenty for most firms.
Turn On Strong Sign-In
Confirm multi-factor authentication is required for every user, not merely available. If your platform supports single sign-on through Microsoft 365, consider it, since one well-protected identity is easier to manage than many separate passwords.
Review Permissions on Sensitive Matters
Some matters should not be visible to everyone: internal investigations, partner disputes, high-profile clients, employment matters involving firm staff.
- Identify matters that warrant restricted access.
- Confirm the restriction is working by testing with a standard user account.
- Document who decided who has access. Ethical screens in lateral-hire situations depend on this being reliable and provable.
Clean the Matter List
Old open matters distort reports and clutter searches.
- Pull a list of matters with no activity in the past year.
- Have the responsible attorney confirm whether each should be closed.
- Close matters properly, with a closing date and consistent status.
- Follow your retention policy for what happens next. Do not delete anything until you know the retention period your state bar and your engagement letters require.
Audit Connected Apps and Integrations
Integrations are convenient and risky in equal measure, because each one holds a token that can read firm data.
- List every connected app: email, calendar, accounting, e-signature, document automation, AI tools.
- Remove anything unused or unrecognized.
- For the ones you keep, confirm who authorized them and what data they can reach.
- Prefer integrations that are vetted by the platform's own marketplace, and ask vendors how they store and protect data.
Fix Contacts and Data Quality
Messy contact records cause misdirected emails, which are a real confidentiality risk under the duty in ABA Model Rule 1.6(c) to make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized disclosure.
- Merge duplicate contacts.
- Correct email addresses that bounce.
- Mark opposing parties and third parties clearly, so staff do not mix them with clients on mailing lists.
- Standardize how you record client names and entity names.
Tidy Billing and Trust Settings
Billing and trust accounting deserve special care.
- Review who can edit time entries, adjust invoices and record trust transactions.
- Confirm reconciliation reports are being run on schedule and reviewed by someone other than the person entering transactions.
- Check that payment links and online-payment settings point to the correct accounts.
Check Backups and Exports
Cloud platforms are resilient but not infallible, and you may be responsible for your own data copies.
- Ask what the vendor backs up and for how long.
- Schedule a periodic export of matters, contacts, billing and documents to storage you control.
- Test that an export can actually be opened and understood.
Make Cleanup a Routine
The best result of an audit is a calendar entry. Put a quarterly fifteen-minute user review and a twice-yearly integration review on someone's task list.
Counsel Cyber helps law firms configure and maintain practice-management and document systems, including permissions, integrations and Microsoft 365 connections. If you would like help with a cleanup, we can review your setup with you and flag the highest-priority fixes first.