Clio Is Cutting Off LawPay on August 31. Here's What Your Firm Needs to Do Now.

For years, boutique law firms have relied on the native integration between Clio and LawPay to handle client billing, payment collection, and IOLTA trust account management in one seamless workflow. That integration ends on August 31, 2026.

For years, boutique law firms have relied on the native integration between Clio and LawPay to handle client billing, payment collection, and IOLTA trust account management in one seamless workflow. That integration ends on August 31, 2026. After that date, the two platforms will no longer talk to each other automatically. If your firm runs both and you have not made a decision about what comes next, you are looking at a manual billing headache starting September 1st at best. At worst, you are looking at compliance exposure around your trust account reconciliation.

Why This Matters More Than a Software Update

For law firms, the connection between your payment processor and your case management system is load-bearing infrastructure. Here is what breaks when the integration goes dark.

• Trust account reconciliation becomes manual. If you are using LawPay to accept retainers and deposit funds into your IOLTA account, and Clio to track those balances against client matters, you currently have an automated sync keeping those records aligned. Without the integration, every payment will require manual entry into Clio to stay compliant with your state bar's trust accounting rules.
• Earned vs unearned fee separation gets messy. Clio currently handles the logic of moving funds from trust to operating as you bill against a retainer. Disconnecting LawPay means that logic breaks, and someone on your staff, probably you, has to manage it manually or risk a compliance violation.
• Billing slows down. The seamless send invoice, get paid, record it workflow your team relies on will require additional steps, additional time, and additional opportunity for error.

Your Three Options After August 31

OPTION 1 - Migrate to Clio Payments: Clio has its own native payment processing solution built directly into the platform. If your firm moves to Clio Payments before August 31, you lose nothing. Trust accounting, billing workflows, and reconciliation all continue to work natively. This is the cleanest path for most firms. The tradeoff is that you are locking your payment processing into Clio's ecosystem, which may come with different fee structures than your current LawPay arrangement.

OPTION 2 - Keep LawPay and Build a Custom Integration Bridge: If your firm prefers to stay with LawPay for rate reasons, familiarity, or because your clients are accustomed to it, you can maintain the connection through a custom webhook or automation bridge that replicates the data sync the native integration was handling. This requires a technical setup but keeps both platforms in play. Done correctly it is invisible to your staff and your clients.

OPTION 3 - Switch to a Different Processor That Integrates Natively: A third option is to evaluate whether this is a good time to reassess your entire payment stack. There are other legal payment processors such as Headnote and Tabs3 that integrate natively with Clio or with your case management system. If you have been unhappy with LawPay for other reasons, this disruption is a natural forcing function to make a change you may have been considering anyway.

What to Do Right Now

Before you do anything else, answer these three questions about your current setup.

1. How are retainer payments currently recorded in Clio?

Are they syncing automatically from LawPay, or is someone on your team entering them manually? If it is automatic today, that automation breaks on September 1st.

2. Who manages your trust account reconciliation?

Is it you, a paralegal, or your bookkeeper? They need to be part of this conversation because their workflow is the one that changes most dramatically.

3. Have you logged into your Clio account to see what migration options they are offering?

Clio is actively promoting Clio Payments as the replacement. Log in and review what they are offering current users in terms of transition support, pricing, and any promotional rates for switching before the deadline.

Once you have those answers you will have a much clearer picture of which of the three paths above is the right fit for your firm.

Not Sure Where Your Firm Stands?

We offer a free 10-minute Billing and Payment Continuity Audit for law firms currently using Clio and LawPay together. We will walk through your current setup, identify exactly where the integration break affects your workflow, and recommend the cleanest path forward before August 31. Book your free audit at vofficeai.com.

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