Technology

Clio Unveils Major Overhaul Of Its Platform And New Focus On Moving Practice To The Cloud

Huge news from the Clio Cloud Conference, which kicked off in New Orleans earlier today.

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In a recent column here, I teased forthcoming news that Clio, the practice management company, would be announcing during its annual Clio Cloud Conference. I’d been given an advance briefing on the news, but under an embargo that prevented me from revealing it until the conference.

This morning, the conference kicked off in New Orleans, and during his opening keynote, cofounder and CEO Jack Newton made a number of notable announcements about the company and its practice management platform.

[I have a much more detailed report of this morning’s announcements at my Lawsites blog.]

For Clio’s customers, the biggest news is that Clio is unveiling a top-to-bottom re-engineering and redesign of its practice management platform. This is the culmination of a year-long effort, which Clio dubbed Apollo.

The company spent more than 600 hours and 60 days visiting law firms, consulting with clients, conducting user testing, and monitoring feedback from customer surveys and interactions. It then incorporated all that input into building a platform with an all-new design, faster performance, and some 220 feature improvements.

Clio has also created a new version of its API (application programming interface) to better connect its ecosystem of more than 70 integration partners, and it has launched a new App Directory to make it easier for its customers to find integrations appropriate to their practice.

For the legal industry more broadly, perhaps an even bigger story is that of where Clio intends to go from here. Whereas its mission so far has been to move law practice management to the cloud, its mission going forward is to move law practice to the cloud and, in the process, to, as its motto now says, “Transform the practice of law, for good.”

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“The idea of practice management is a relic of the old way of framing what legal software can do,” Newton said. “So the next chapter is to move the practice of law to the cloud. Eventually, all sorts of other facets of practicing law will get pulled into the cloud. The idea of practice management will become a limiting way to describe what we do and what our vision is.”

Clio’s reengineered platform is a major step in that direction, Newton said. He sees the platform becoming the backbone of a modern law firm’s technology stack and the hub of an ever-expanding ecosystem of integration partners to address a range of functions within a firm.

“With Apollo,” Newton said, “we’ve built the foundation to move the practice of law to the cloud.”

Another new initiative for Clio will be focus not just on improving the experience of its customers, but also on improving the experience of its customers’ clients.

“What we’ve done so far is help firms improve their operational excellence,” Newton explained. “What we haven’t done enough is focus on the customer experience. A huge part of what we need to do going forward is focus on the customer experience side of things and redefine how lawyers work and operate.”

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Quoting Steve Jobs, who famously said, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe,” Newton also announced several philanthropic initiatives:

  • Clio is providing $6 million in free use of its software to law schools, paralegal programs and university-affiliated nonprofits, which translates to roughly 100,000 users getting free access.
  • Clio is launching the Clio Fund, a $1 million fund that will be used to support innovative legal startups.
  • Clio is launching a code competition in which it will award a $100,000 prize to the individual or company that builds the best new Clio integration between now and next year’s Clio conference.

“There’s a saying that it takes 10 years to build truly great software,” Newton said at the media briefing earlier this month. “I think we’ve built a great product. But now we want to build a 100-year company. We’re opening a new chapter for our second act.”

Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at [email protected], and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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