Technology

Clio Unveiled A Lot Of New Projects And They Boil Down To 'The Client' And 'The Cloud'

The future of law is starting to crystalize.

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“The Client and The Cloud” sounds like a great title for a spy thriller or something.

Alas, anyone who participated in last week’s Clio Cloud Conference, will understand those terms as the twin pillars underpinning Clio’s latest round of new announcements. Clio CEO and co-founder Jack Newton sees the future of successful law firms built around being client-centered and in the Cloud and everything the company outlined last week helps Clio give firms the tools to push the envelope on both.

In a sense they’re both connected. Or maybe it’s not so much a connection as the former is a necessary but insufficient goal for a lawyer without the latter. How does an attorney provide service to the client without the Cloud at this point? The client also lives on the internet. The client schedules there, works there, pays bills there, frets about security there… how can lawyers do their job if they don’t meet clients where they are?

I got a chance to talk to Newton last week for the Thinking Like A Lawyer podcast. You can check that out below. But outside the show we talked about Clio’s latest announcements and where the profession is going to be headed.

The biggest ticket announcement of the week was Clio’s new partnership with Google. Google My Business operates from a simple premise: people find businesses through Google searches so Google should help businesses put the right foot forward. One of the statistics from the Legal Trends Report this year is that 57 percent of clients start the search for a lawyer on their own and most of that is through Google. As Newton says, “Despite all the great efforts at building lawyer marketplaces online over the years, the starting point is still Google — it’s where the customer intent is landing and starting.”

With My Business, Google is trying to replace the role of a firm website — at least as a first impression. It gives everyone all the tools to research a business, review ratings, and schedule appointments without ever leaving Google. A standardized format with everything the prospective client actually wants to know. “The longterm trend important for lawyers to recognize is it’s important to stand out and the way to standout is with Google,” Newton explained.

Google approached Clio to help build out My Business in the legal space. By integrating with the Clio platform, firms can populate the My Business profile by seamlessly passing along the information that can make it sing, provide integrated scheduling tools, and, on the back end, Clio tracks the entire client journey, allowing the system to reach out to clients at the end to get them to provide a review that can flesh out the My Business profile. Frankly, this partnership is a no-brainer. Working with Google is also bound to give Clio opportunities to increase the capabilities of ClioGrow in capturing leads and driving demands too.

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Clio has also brought all the “virtual collaboration all-stars” into the Clio platform: Dialpad, Zoom, Microsoft Teams — it’s all about interaction. “It’s the beginning of what will become one of our most important products: Clio for Clients. How do you interact with your clients on an ongoing basis? It needs to be simple and secure… it takes away a ton of confusion for everyone 10 different communications channels and allows the exchange of documents and integrated e-signing experience,” Newton said. This becomes the app the client talks to you through, edits drafts through, sends documents securely through, signs documents through — and then everything gets seamlessly catalogued in the platform. It becomes the one-stop shop: this is where my lawyer lives on my device.

The Client and The Cloud. That’s where you’re going to want to be.

Here’s the podcast… which also includes musings on Seyfarth’s ransomware debacle and ACB’s confirmation notepad.

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