No app can read an iPhone's calls or texts. What does log them to Clio: Clio's own app and texting, Quo, Call Connector, VXT, Corvum, LegalMate, Time Miner.
[ KEY TAKEAWAYS ]
A lawyer asked us this week for "a program, connector or extension I can run on my cell phone that picks up phone calls and text messages with clients, keyed to their telephone numbers". The honest answer first: on an iPhone, no app can read the phone's own call history or Messages. Apple's own call framework tells an app that a call is in progress and nothing more, not even the number. So nothing will quietly log the calls and texts on your personal number. What does work moves the calls onto a line that a service controls. Clio's own app logs calls you place inside it and texts on a firm number. Quo, Call Connector, VXT, Corvum and a few others log every call and text on a business number straight to the Clio contact, some with a time entry. LegalMate sits under RingCentral, Dialpad, Quo or Zoom Phone and writes the summary and the time entry. For calls that already happened, Time Miner reads your carrier's call log. Pick by how the firm takes calls today.
third-party apps can read an iPhone's call history or Messages. CallKit exposes call state, never the number.
toggle in the Clio mobile app turns a logged call into a time entry. Outbound, in-app calls only.
phone products in Clio's App Directory that log calls to the contact or matter. Five of them also write the time entry.
carriers whose call-log exports Time Miner turns into Clio time entries after the fact: Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T.
The request is reasonable and the phone is the obstacle. Apple's CallKit lets any app observe that a call started or ended, but the call object carries no remote number, and observers stop updating when the app is in the background. There is no permission an app can ask for that unlocks recent calls. Messages is sealed the same way. Shortcuts cannot help either: Apple's automation triggers cover time of day, alarms, notifications and the like, and there is no "when a call ends" trigger; the closest workaround people have found is firing when the Phone app closes, which still knows nothing about who called or for how long.
Two newer iOS features look close and are not. Live Caller ID Lookup lets a firm show "Jane Doe, matter 1234" on the incoming call screen from its own server, but Apple built it so the server cannot learn which number was looked up. Call recording in iOS 18.1 and later saves a transcript to a Call Recordings folder in Notes, announces the recording to both parties, and offers no hook for an app to pick it up. Useful for a lawyer who wants the transcript; it is still a manual share into Clio per call.
Android is looser on paper: call-log and SMS permissions exist, and automation services such as IFTTT can post a webhook when a call ends with the number and duration. In practice Google Play only lets an app hold those permissions if it is the default phone or messaging app, so general practice-management tools do not ship with them. One legal product, Time Miner, does read Android call and text history directly. The data is also readable off the phone: a Mac signed into the same iCloud account with Messages in iCloud, or an encrypted iPhone backup on a computer, holds the call and message history, and at least one CRM (Cloze) syncs from there. Nobody has built that for Clio, and it would be a desktop agent with full disk access to a lawyer's machine, which is its own conversation.
Three things, and firms miss two of them. Calls you place from inside the Clio mobile app, by tapping the number on a contact or matter, are timed in the background; when you hang up, a phone log appears with date, matter, contact and duration, the subject prefilled as "Call to [name] at [number]", and a toggle creates the time entry, billable or not. It is outbound only, in-app only, and the firm needs Clio Timekeeping. Clio's AI timekeeping extends the same idea: it watches Outlook, OneDrive and those in-app outbound calls and drafts the entry.
Texting: Clio Manage sends and receives texts on a firm toll-free number once the business is verified, US and Canada only. The conversation lives on the contact and shows up in the Communications tab of every matter that contact has; hovering a message and clicking the clock adds the time entry. That is the firm-owned answer to client texting. It does nothing for texts a lawyer sends from a personal cell, and that is the point: the texts stop living there.
Every product below gives the firm a number that rings in an app on the phone and on the desktop, and because the call runs through the vendor's service, the vendor can log it. This is the closest thing to what the lawyer asked for, because it covers inbound calls and texts. The difference between them is what lands in Clio and whether the time entry is written for you.
| Product | Captures | Writes to Clio | Time entry | List price (vendor, Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) | Every call type on the Quo number, texts in and out | Calls as a Communication on the contact with duration, AI summary, link back; texts as Notes on the contact. Contact level, not matter level. | No. "Recorded time is added separately." | Business $33 per user per month, Scale $47; Clio integration included |
| Call Connector (ion8) | Calls, texts and faxes from RingCentral, Dialpad, Zoom, Teams, GoTo, Webex | Calls as a Communication with an activity; texts as a Communication; faxes as documents. Links to the matter automatically when the contact has exactly one active matter. | Calls yes, texts no | Free tier with unlimited call and text logging; $49 per licence per month adds transcription and summaries |
| VXT | Calls and texts, mobile and desktop | Communication records per call, notes to a chosen matter, texts saved to Clio | Yes, automatic, with category and rate | Free to start; per-user price not published |
| Corvum | Calls and full text conversations on any Corvum device, including unsaved numbers | Communications tab, matched to contacts | Yes, posted as billable activities if you choose | Text $22.95, voice and text $27.95 per user per month |
| Ringover | Incoming and outgoing calls and texts | Logged to the matter; dialer inside Clio | Not documented | From $15 per month |
| Vonage for Clio | Incoming and outgoing calls matched to a Clio contact | Call log with tags and notes, associated to a matter | Not documented | Not published |
| TeleVoIPs | Every inbound and outbound call, texts | Call log with summaries and transcripts | Yes, tracked to the matter | Not published |
Two details decide whether any of these actually matches a caller. The number in Clio has to be stored the way the integration expects; RingCentral's own connector, for one, requires the full international format or it fails to find the contact. And most of them write to the contact, so a client with several matters needs a person or a routine to move the log to the right one. Call Connector is the only one in the table that says plainly when it links to a matter on its own: when the contact has exactly one.
If the firm already runs RingCentral, Dialpad, Quo or Zoom Phone, LegalMate is a layer that listens to the recorded call, writes the summary, decides which contact and matter it belongs to, syncs texts to the matter, and creates a Clio time entry with an AI-written description the moment the call ends. Desk phone, app or mobile, nothing changes about how the call is taken. It is built for firms with four or more attorneys and high call volume, needs the firm's Microsoft 365 mail connected, and is priced on request. For a solo, the economics rarely work; for a litigation shop where every call is billable, it is the most complete answer on this page.
Worth knowing before you rely on a phone system's native connector instead: a law firm on RingCentral's own App Connect reported in February 2025 that calls were not appearing in Clio's Communications tab, and RingCentral's product manager replied that Clio's API is limited for search, which makes matching a number to a contact or matter difficult. Matching is the hard part of every route here, including ours.
"Clio's API is incredibly limited when it comes to search, making it very difficult sometimes to match a phone number with a Clio contact or matter." A RingCentral product manager, answering a law firm whose calls were not showing up in Clio.
Time Miner works the other way around. At month end you download the call and text history from Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T, upload it, and it links each call to contacts and matters and suggests time entries to approve and push to Clio. On Android it reads the phone directly; on iPhone the carrier export is the only path. Published price: $49.99 per user per month, less on annual terms. It is reconstruction, not capture, but it is the only route that recovers calls already made on a personal number.
Route 1
Clio's own app and texting number
Outbound calls you place inside the app, texts on a firm toll-free number. No new vendor. Inbound calls to the cell are missed.
time entry: toggle outbound only
Route 2
A business line that writes to Clio
Quo logs calls and texts to the contact with a summary. Call Connector, VXT and Corvum log the call and write the activity.
Quo: no time entry Call Connector, VXT, Corvum: yes
Route 3
LegalMate under the phone system
RingCentral, Dialpad, Quo or Zoom Phone underneath. Summary, matter match and a time entry the moment the call ends.
time entry: automatic 4+ attorneys
Route 4
Carrier export, after the fact
Time Miner reads the Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T log you download and suggests entries to approve. Reconstruction, not capture.
monthly batch iPhone: carrier export only
If you already have Claude listing your day's work and want the calls in there too, we set up the Clio connector on your machine for free and run the first day with you.
Book the install callClio's API has the two objects you need. A phone log is a Communication of type PhoneCommunication with a subject, a received time, a body and a matter. A time entry is an Activity of type TimeEntry with hours, date, matter and note, and it can carry a link to the communication it bills. Quo writes the first and not the second; LegalMate, VXT and Corvum write both; Clio's app writes both if you toggle it. For any firm that wants one review step, the gap closes with the same daily routine many lawyers already run in Claude: read the day's phone logs on each matter, draft a time entry per call with the summary as the description, check nothing is already posted for it, post it through the connector and link it to the call. The routine, the read-before-write rule and the matter matching are in the companion post: posting time entries into Clio from Claude, without duplicates.
Privilege A transcript or summary of a client call is privileged material, and every route on this page except Clio's own puts a phone vendor in the chain that produces it. That vendor belongs on the firm's vendor list with its data terms read, the same way the firm reviewed its AI plan.
Not from the phone's own dialer and Messages. iOS gives apps no access to call history or to SMS and iMessage; Apple's CallKit tells an app that a call is happening, never which number, and Shortcuts has no trigger for a call ending. Anything that logs calls and texts into Clio from a phone is either Clio's own app for calls you place inside it, or a business phone number app whose service sees the call because the call runs through it.
Only calls you place from inside the Clio mobile app by tapping a contact's number there. Clio tracks the duration and creates a phone log with date, matter, contact and a default subject, and a toggle creates the time entry. Incoming calls and calls from the regular dialer are not captured. The feature needs Clio Timekeeping enabled for the firm.
Yes. Clio Manage can send and receive texts on a firm toll-free number after business verification, US and Canada only. Conversations are stored on the contact, not the matter, show in every matter's Communications tab for that contact, and a clock icon on the message log adds a time entry. It does not touch texts sent from a lawyer's personal cell.
Every call on the Quo number, inbound, outbound, missed, forwarded or voicemail, becomes a Communication on the matching contact with direction, duration, an AI summary and a link back. Every text becomes a Note on the contact. It does not create time entries; its own documentation says recorded time is added separately. Clio Manage, Quo Business or Scale plan.
LegalMate under RingCentral, Dialpad, Quo or Zoom Phone writes a time entry with an AI-written description when the call ends. VXT creates automated time entries and communication records per call. Corvum can post calls as billable activities. TeleVoIPs tracks time to the matter. Call Connector attaches an activity to each logged call but not to texts. Clio's own app creates the entry from its outbound phone log if you toggle it.
Time Miner takes the call and text history you download from Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T, links it to contacts and matters, and suggests time entries to approve and push to Clio. On Android it reads the phone's logs directly; on iPhone the carrier export is the only path. It is a monthly reconstruction, not live capture.
NEWSLETTER
[ WRITTEN BY ]
Petar Jovanović
Co-Founder & Technical Lead
Co-Founder and Technical Lead at Oktopeak. Builds regulated software for legal and healthcare teams, and leads the rescues of codebases other vendors left half-finished.
[ LEGAL TECH ]
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