Robert Ambrogi Blog
During ABA Techshow last week in Chicago, I had the opportunity to sit down for a brief conversation with Jack Newton, founder and CEO of law practice technology company Clio, who provided additional details on some of the company’s recent news.
We discussed Clio’s greater focus on midsized law firms, its impending launch of generative AI, its roll-out of features for legal aid providers, and its rebranding of its Lawyaw document automation software.
Greater Focus on Midsized Firms
As I reported a few weeks ago, Clio announced that it would now be heightening its investment and focus on technology for midsized law firms. But in our conversation, Newton emphasized that Clio is not new to the mid-sized market — it already has more than 1,000 midsized firms as customers.
Although Clio started in 2008 with a “laser focus” on solos, Newton said, it quickly started seeing demand from two-person firms, then multiple-lawyer firms, then 20-30 person firms, and ultimately into midsized firms, which Newton defines as firms of 20-200 people.
“We’ve quietly become the market leader in cloud-based law practice management for midsized law firms, with over 1,000 customers in that market,” he said.
Even so, there are a number of other law practice management companies also serving that market, including Actionstep, Centerbase, Filevine, Litify, Neos and Surepoint. Given that fact, I asked Newton how Clio can distinguish itself from those competitors.
Learn more about Clio Manage and Clio Grow at the LawNext Legal Technology Directory.
In part, the proof is in the pudding, he suggested, given that Clio is already serving a significant number of midsized firms. The only real challenge Clio faces in that market, he believes, is one of its own making – the perception that Clio is a platform designed only for smaller firms.
In my own conversations with others about Clio’s announcement, some questioned whether Clio’s platform has the complexity (in a good sense) and configurability that midsized firms would need, pointing out that other products take a database-heavy approach that provides firms with a number of options for customization.
But Newton’s response is that any firm saying it wants a more database-driven offering has a “1970s problem.” Firms today want an interface their members love using, a platform that has mobile capabilities, a robust integration ecosystem, and a strong API, he believes.
“That’s the superpower we have,” he said.
In fact, Newton said, one of the largest law firms in the world uses Clio for matter management and time tracking, and then ties that into its back-end systems through Clio’s API.
Clio has already put extensive product development resources into features designed to better serve the mid-firm market, Newton said, and going forward will invest even more deliberately in serving that market.
That includes development of features such as better reporting, more sophisticated permissioning, enhanced security, single sign-on, and other enterprise grade features.
At the same time, Newton wanted to emphasize that Clio is not moving away from its core market of solos and small firms. “That’s still the heart of our market and the foundation of our growth,” he said. “We will never leave our solo/small base.”
In fact, his eventual goal for Clio is to serve firms of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest. Clio’s mission statement, he notes, is to transform the legal experience for all, and that means that eventually, not only midsized firms, but the Am Law 200 and Am Law 100 will be using Clio, he hopes.
This pattern has been proven in other industries, he said, because it is easier for a software company that starts out targeting the lower end of the market to move up than for something that started at the top of the market to move down.
Clio Duo Coming Soon
Remember Clio Duo? At the Clio Cloud Conference last October, the company announced that it would be launching this proprietary generative AI built natively into its products.
Well, soon it is arriving. Newton said that Clio Duo is being released in an early access version this month, with some customers already being onboarded, and then will become generally available to customers in the second quarter of the year.
Clio for Legal Aid
Also at last fall’s Clio conference, the company introduced Clio for Legal Aid, bringing new features to Clio Manage designed specifically for legal aid organizations, together with discounted subscription pricing for those organizations.
The new features include tools to help legal aid organizations better manage grants and funding sources, report on grant deliverables, calculate intake eligibility, and use grant-funded or sliding-scale billing functionality.
In our conversation last week, Newton said that the development of the legal aid product was consistent with the same mission that is driving its move into midsized firms, that of transforming the legal experience for all.
“Moving up-market is part of it, but moving into pro bono and low bono is as well,” he said. “We’re investing very deliberately in the legal aid market.”
Drawing a parallel to the Steve Jobs quote that bringing iTunes to Windows users was “like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell,” Newton expressed the belief that the legal aid market is not well served by existing case management software designed for them.
By bringing that market a better user experience and more powerful cloud platform, he maintained, he can help legal aid significantly expand the number of people it serves. Clio will continue to invest in serving that market, he said, including through the development of AI tools.
By the way, something I did not realize about Clio for Legal Aid is that it was developed with the help of a Technology Initiative Grant from the Legal Services Corporation after the Neighborhood Legal Services Program in Washington, D.C., began looking for a way to innovate its case management. With the TIG funding, NLSP worked with Clio and A2J Tech to develop what became Clio for Legal Aid.
Having written earlier this month about the need for creative funding for innovation in legal services, I was glad to learn this back story.
Rebranding of Lawyaw
Last week, as I reported here, Clio announced that Lawyaw, the document automation software it acquired in 2021, will now be called Clio Draft. When we spoke last week, Newton said this is more than a rebranding of the product, but a reflection of its deeper integration into the company’s products and brand.
Describing documents as the “atomic unit of work that lawyers operate on,” Newton said Clio Draft will continue to be more tightly integrated into core workflows within Clio Manage and Clio Grow.
And he teased further development, promising that AI would “change the game” for Clio Draft.