People & HR

How to offboard a departing employee as Small Law and Accounting Practices

People & HRFor Small Law and Accounting Practices3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

When a paralegal or staff accountant leaves a six-person firm, the offboarding is whoever has fifteen free minutes that week. Someone revokes their Clio or QuickBooks access three days late. The departing employee's Outlook stays active because nobody remembered to tell IT — or you are IT. Open client matters assigned to them sit undiscovered until a client calls. Billable time from their last two weeks hasn't been reviewed or transferred. Their document templates, email snippets, and matter notes live in their head or a personal Google Drive folder that just walked out the door. There is no checklist. There is no system. There is a paralegal who knew everything, and now there isn't.

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People & HRFor Small Law and Accounting Practices3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A structured offboarding tracker that pulls the departing employee's open Clio matters, outstanding billable time, and calendar commitments into one place so nothing falls through the cracks before their last day

An automated email workflow that drafts client-notification emails for matter reassignments and sends internal handoff summaries to the attorneys or CPAs taking over

A knowledge-capture process that turns the departing employee's matter notes, templates, and process documentation into searchable firm knowledge before they leave

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Knowledge Management Email Agent Task Manager

Data sources & config

Clio and MyCase are automated through your browser — no API needed, so the agent navigates and pulls matter and contact data the same way your staff does. Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule for billable time and payment history. Starch connects directly to Outlook (or Gmail) for calendar and email. Notion is connected from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live for existing documentation. All task tracking runs through Starch's Task Manager; knowledge capture runs through Starch's Knowledge Management app.

Prompts to copy

Build me an offboarding tracker for a departing paralegal. Pull their open matters from Clio (browser automation), list unreviewed billable time from the last 30 days in QuickBooks, and show all calendar events they're attached to in the next 14 days from Outlook. Flag any matter where they're the sole contact.

Draft a client-notification email for each open matter being reassigned from [departing employee] to [attorney name]. Use the matter name, a one-sentence status summary, and the new point of contact. Queue them for my review before sending.

Create an offboarding task list with P1–P4 priorities: P1 = revoke system access by end of day, P2 = reassign open matters before last day, P3 = review and approve outstanding billable time, P4 = capture process documentation. Set due dates relative to the employee's last day.

Set up a knowledge-capture workspace for [employee name]'s offboarding. Create a structured template where they document their recurring tasks, matter-specific notes, client preferences they know by heart, and any process that only they currently run. Auto-categorize entries by practice area.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Clio or MyCase through browser automation and ask Starch to pull every open matter where the departing employee is listed as responsible attorney, paralegal, or primary contact — this is the matter inventory you'll work from.

2 Connect QuickBooks on a scheduled sync and pull unbilled time entries from the last 30 days attributed to the departing employee; flag any that are unreviewed or unapproved so a partner can sign off before the last day.

3 Connect Outlook or Gmail on a scheduled sync and pull every calendar event in the next 14 days where the departing employee is organizer or required attendee — client calls, court dates, filing deadlines — so nothing drops off the radar at reassignment.

4 Use Starch's Task Manager to generate a P1–P4 offboarding checklist with hard due dates: system-access revocation on day one, matter reassignment by day three, billable-time review by day five, documentation capture by last day.

5 For each matter being reassigned, have the email-agent app draft a handoff summary to the incoming attorney or CPA — matter name, current status, next deadline, and any client-specific context the departing employee has captured — queued for partner review before sending.

6 For client-facing matters requiring a notification (anything where the client has a primary relationship with the departing employee), have the email-agent draft a short client email introducing the new point of contact; review and send in batch rather than one by one.

7 Set up a Knowledge Management workspace specifically for this offboarding: the departing employee fills in a structured template covering recurring tasks, non-obvious client preferences, matter-specific institutional knowledge, and any process that currently lives only in their head.

8 Ask Starch to cross-reference the knowledge entries against your existing Notion documentation (queried live from Starch's integration catalog) and flag gaps — procedures they do that aren't written down anywhere in the firm.

9 After the employee's last day, run a final check through browser automation on Clio to confirm all matters have been reassigned and none remain with the departed employee as the active responsible party.

10 Archive the offboarding task list and knowledge-capture workspace inside Starch's Knowledge Management app under a dated offboarding folder — next time someone leaves, you start from a real template instead of a blank page.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

April 2026 Paralegal Departure — Westbrook & Cho LLP

Sample numbers from a real run

Open matters with departing paralegal as primary contact	14
Unbilled time entries to review and approve (hours)	31
Client-notification emails drafted by Starch	9
Calendar events requiring reassignment in next 14 days	7
Knowledge-capture entries completed before last day	23

Westbrook & Cho is a six-attorney litigation and estate-planning firm. Their paralegal of four years gives two weeks' notice on a Monday. By Tuesday morning, a managing partner has asked Starch to pull every Clio matter where she's listed as primary contact — 14 matters surface, three of which have court dates in the next 30 days. QuickBooks shows 31 hours of unbilled time over the past month that haven't been reviewed; two partner-review sessions later, 28 hours are approved and ready to bill, 3 are written off. The email-agent drafts nine client-notification emails — one per client with active matters — introducing the incoming paralegal and the responsible attorney. The partner reviews and sends in about 25 minutes. The departing paralegal spends her last three days filling in the Knowledge Management workspace: 23 entries covering things like which clients prefer phone over email, how the firm's conflict-check spreadsheet actually works, and the quirks of a recurring estate matter that has a non-standard billing arrangement. On her last day, a Starch automation confirms via Clio browser automation that all 14 matters have a new responsible contact. The firm has a dated offboarding record they can use as a template next time — which at a six-person firm, will happen again sooner than anyone wants.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Open matters reassigned before the departing employee's last day (target: 100%)

Unbilled time entries reviewed and approved within the offboarding window (as a percentage of total flagged hours)

Client-notification emails sent within 48 hours of matter reassignment

Knowledge-capture entries completed per departing employee (the number that goes into the firm's searchable knowledge base)

Days from notice to full system-access revocation (target: same day as last day)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Clio Manage alone

Clio tracks matters but has no offboarding workflow, no billable-time review queue, no email drafting, and no knowledge-capture layer — you're still doing the coordination manually across five tabs.

Notion + manual checklist

A Notion checklist is better than nothing but it doesn't pull live data from Clio, QuickBooks, or Outlook — someone still has to find the open matters, the unbilled time, and the calendar conflicts by hand.

HR software (BambooHR, Rippling)

Good for IT access revocation and benefits termination, but knows nothing about your open matters, client relationships, or firm-specific knowledge — it's personnel offboarding, not practice offboarding.

Karbon or TaxDome (for accounting practices)

Strong workflow management within their ecosystem but neither drafts client communication, captures departing-employee knowledge, or connects to QuickBooks billable-time review in a single offboarding flow.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — knowledge management, email agent, task manager all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Clio doesn't have a public API — can Starch actually pull our matter data?

Yes. Starch automates Clio through your browser — no API needed. The agent logs in and navigates the same screens your staff uses, so it can pull matter lists, responsible-party assignments, and contact data even without a formal connector.

We use QuickBooks for billing. Will Starch see unbilled time entries from a departing employee?

Yes. Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule, including time-tracking entries, invoices, and payment status. You can filter by employee and date range to see exactly what's unreviewed before their last day.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have client confidentiality obligations.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's a real consideration for a law or accounting practice handling privileged client data, and you should weigh it accordingly. Starch's honest answer is that certification is on the roadmap, not in hand yet.

What happens to the knowledge the departing employee captures in Starch? Can the whole firm search it later?

Yes — that's exactly what the Knowledge Management app is for. Entries are searchable across the firm, auto-categorized by practice area, and Starch flags when documentation goes stale. It's meant to replace the situation where institutional knowledge leaves when a person does.

Can Starch handle the IT side — actually revoking Microsoft 365 or Clio access on the last day?

For revoking access inside browser-navigable admin portals (like Microsoft 365 admin center or Clio firm settings), Starch can automate the steps through browser automation. For anything requiring direct API calls to identity providers, you'd still handle that through your IT admin or HR software — Starch is better positioned as the coordinator and checklist runner than as the identity management system.

We don't have a formal offboarding process today — is this only useful if we already have a system?

No — this is most useful when you don't have a system. You describe what a complete offboarding should look like (matter reassignment, billable-time review, client notification, knowledge capture, access revocation) and Starch builds the tracker, drafts the emails, and runs the checklist. You're building the system as you use it, and it's reusable the next time someone leaves.