A Conversation With Clio CEO Jack Newton

This is technology empowering lawyers to leave Biglaw and start their own practice.

clio-jack-newtonOn September 19th and 20th, I will be attending the Clio Cloud Conference in Chicago. I don’t make it a habit of going to every legal tech conference, in fact I recently sat out ILTA, and I’m sure I will sit out several others. The reason I’m going to the conference is because one of the trends I really care about is technology empowering lawyers to leave Biglaw and start their own practice.

Lawyers constantly ask me about leaving to start a start-up and I always counsel them to consider starting their own practice. Many lawyers would prefer to have their own practice, but it’s hard to compete with the infrastructure, knowledge and technology that Biglaw firms can afford. Clio is one of the companies that is changing that competitive balance.

Vancouver based Clio, started by Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau, was one of the pioneers of creating cloud based products for the legal industry. There was, of course, practice management software before Clio. Abacus, for instance, is a big company that markets an on-premise, highly customized  solution for Biglaw firms — because sometimes big firms do need a solution with more customizations. Clio was one of the first companies that designed  a cloud-based practice management software that could be used by firms of all sizes. And because they built their software in the cloud, they were able to sell to a whole new market of customers who could not previously afford an on-premise solutions: solo lawyers and small to mid-size firms.

To be sure, there are other cloud based practice management companies including MyCase, Rocket Matter and PracticePanther, just to name a few. But Clio has built a fast growing brand, partly on the back of their API (more on that below), and Clio is often one of the heralded examples of venture capital firms investing in the legal tech space. Today, I’m joined by Jack Newton, Clio’s cofounder and CEO, who will share more about his company’s back story. As always, these conversations aren’t “live chats,” they are real-life conversations and Jack and I are responding to each other asynchronously. So, for the best experience, follow along by clicking the button under the conversation.


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Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder of ReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at zach@replyall.me.

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