Clio significantly advances its versatile platform to optimize how law firms operate now, and into the future
NASHVILLE, TN, Oct. 9, 2023 /CNW/ - Clio, the world's leading provider of cloud-based legal technology, revealed a rich set of new features and capabilities to its already robust legal operating system at the 2023 Clio Cloud Conference. With Clio, legal professionals can further customize their technology to maximize their productivity and deliver exceptional client service—all within Clio's centralized platform trusted by more than 150,000 legal professionals worldwide.
"This year, we have focused on centralization and connectivity throughout our platform, helping legal professionals to bring more of what they do into Clio," said Jack Newton, CEO and Founder of Clio. "By creating more and faster connections to clients, colleagues, and the courts, Clio provides the essential tools they need to foster strong relationships, increase profitability, and run a healthy, thriving practice. Each update we've unveiled this year is rooted in the desire to move legal professionals up the value chain, and make Clio work harder for them across one versatile platform."
Clio's Personal Injury Add-On is a new suite of features available with Clio Manage, specifically designed for the distinct workflows, procedures, and requirements intrinsic to personal injury law. Personal injury lawyers can leverage Clio to track the status of medical records and bills, manage expenses, organize damages, and maximize client settlements. Clio helps efficiently standardize processes, prevent communication bottlenecks, and keep cases moving forward.
This suite of features is designed to meet the needs of 50,000 personal injury lawyers practicing across the United States. It also serves an unmet demand for personal injury lawyers to work seamlessly on a centralized cloud-based platform within larger, multi-practice firms.
Clio File is a new electronic filing (e-filing) and electronic service (e-service) solution built directly into Clio Manage, an industry-first for legal practice management software. It enables legal professionals to electronically file, serve, and deliver court documents directly from Clio Manage.
Legal professionals can keep track of court deadlines with built-in rules based calendaring, automate the preparation of the court documents through Clio's court forms product, Lawyaw, and now, with Clio File, submit those documents directly into an applicable court system.
Clio File is built on the success of Clio's previous investments into court-related technologies, Lawyaw and CalendarRules, which to date have helped thousands of lawyers improve their court document and scheduling workflow processes. In the past year, Lawyaw document automation has enabled the creation of close to 9 million documents. Lawyaw also offers an easy-to-use solution for court forms across all 50 U.S. states, as well as federal immigration forms. Clio has also added over 275,000 automated court rules to the calendars of Clio customers. With a library of rules across 50 U.S. states and more than 1,800 jurisdictions, these rules help firms stay on top of court deadlines and case milestones.
Starting with Texas, Clio aims to roll out this service in early 2024 to states that accept e-filing and e-services in their court systems.
As the legal sector eagerly anticipates the widespread use of generative AI, Clio has unveiled its vision to bring generative AI functionality directly within its legal operating system, starting with the introduction of Clio Duo. Clio Duo is a proprietary generative AI legal technology that will be natively built into all of Clio's offerings, beginning with Clio Manage. It is designed to be a dynamic AI-powered partner for legal professionals—always available to help make the most of their working day.
Clio Duo will serve as a coach, intuitive collaborator, and expert consultant to legal professionals, deeply attuned to the intricate facets of running a law firm. It will enable Clio customers to unlock the potential of their own data, helping them to become even more effective business owners, and drive better outcomes for their clients.
Clio Duo is built on a solid foundation of responsible protection of sensitive legal data. It adheres to the highest security, compliance, and privacy standards found throughout the rest of Clio's operating system. When available to the market, Clio Duo's audit log functionality will track all AI activity to be logged and discoverable—a foundational aspect of responsible and sustainable legal AI practice that Clio is spearheading.
Clio Duo is the company's first step into generative AI offerings for customers, in a years-long transformative journey that will change how legal professionals value their time and effort towards a wide array of legal tasks. In the coming years, Clio will power a suite of AI-assisted add-ons available within its core offerings, Clio Manage and Clio Grow.
Clio Duo will be available to customers in 2024.
Clio offers discounted plans to eligible U.S.-based organizations providing assistance to individuals who cannot afford legal services. Clio has designed specialized features for nonprofits that provide legal services through both grants and sliding scale fees to create and manage grants and funding sources, report on grant deliverables, calculate intake eligibility, and utilize grant-funded or sliding-scale billing functionality.
In addition to these broad areas of innovation and expansion, Clio has also unveiled a series of powerful updates to its core products and features, providing more value for customers who run their firms on Clio.
Clio Grow, Clio's client intake and legal client relationship management (CRM) software
- Automated workflows
Clio Grow enables customers to automate document and email creation to ensure efficient communications with new prospects and clients. In addition to these popular automated tasks, Clio now offers its customers the ability to automatically trigger steps in their intake process in a predetermined sequence. This optimized sequencing enables legal professionals to quickly intake clients with minimal effort. Set up is quick and easy with templates for common workflows that include actions like sending out an intake form, requests to book consultations, and more. Plus you have visibility into each automated action that will occur, giving you control and peace of mind. - Google's Local Services Ads for Clio
Local Services Ads for Clio combines Google Ads' localized lead generation with Clio's client intake software for law firms, Clio Grow. Lawyers can easily promote their firm on Google Search, capture leads from nearby residents, and manage their advertising spend, all from an easy-to-use dashboard.
With Google's Local Services Ads for Clio, customers can automatically convert leads into prospective clients in Clio Grow, ensuring no leads are left unanswered.
Even with limited marketing experience or a small budget, law firms can grow their impact by leveraging the reach and effectiveness of Google's Local Services Ads. - Automated text messaging
By leveraging text messages, legal professionals can streamline client intake processes by expediting form completion and agreement signing for faster onboarding. Text messages are likely to be seen and actioned on quickly–87% of texts are opened within an hour of receipt. When it comes to appointments, legal professionals can schedule up to five automatic reminders, via email and text message, to reduce no-shows.
Clio Manage, the legal industry's most widely-used cloud-based legal practice management software
- Matter stages
Matter Stages are Kanban-style visual boards that clearly show legal work in progress, giving legal professionals the highest level of oversight on open cases throughout a law firm. Boards can be organized by category and easily updated as casework progresses.
This easy view enables members across the firm to easily track matters, and quickly take action on matters that need attention. - Matter templates
Matter Templates simplify the process of creating a new matter by providing a pre-built, step-by-step guide for all relevant members of a law firm. In a few clicks, new matters are populated from a set of custom templates. Matter Templates not only create significant time savings on an everyday task but ensure every new case is consistent and accurate from the start, with no missed steps. - Email capabilities
Gmail and Outlook are two of the most popular integrations into Clio, and now, legal professionals can use them to send emails directly from Clio Manage. This feature allows legal professionals to use the same email address used with those providers, without leaving the Clio platform. In addition to reduced app switching, this feature further centralizes law firm communications, automatically logging the time spent sending those emails as billable activities. - Clio for Clients
Clio for Clients is Clio's top rated portal for legal clients to communicate and collaborate with their lawyer. Now available in Spanish for both desktop and mobile, it enables legal professionals to securely communicate and share resources with Spanish speaking clients. Once selected, all text within the portal will switch to Spanish, and all notifications will be delivered in Spanish as well.
Clio has also updated ways for legal professionals to share calendar events through the Clio for Clients app. Now, court dates and meetings can be populated into the Clio for Clients calendar, and legal professionals can notify their clients of the upcoming events. - Clio mobile app
Clio's mobile app is the best app for legal professionals with a 4.8-star rating from over 5.4k reviews. This popular app has been updated to enable a mobile-first approach to legal services, with new functionality in case management, document uploading, and billing on the go.
Legal professionals can now create new matters, and edit existing ones, directly from Clio's mobile app. This includes adding or changing matter details, custom fields, matter permissions, and even billing details. To quickly add documents to matters, Clio's mobile app is also now a handheld document scanner. Paper documents can be converted into professional PDFs and added to Clio with no additional hardware or third party apps required. And to enable real-time billing conversations with clients from anywhere, a complete list of bills are now accessible from Clio's mobile app. This includes the bills' status and details.
Lastly, voice command functionality is available in Clio's mobile app with Apple's Siri voice assistant. Legal professionals can now start timers in Clio, hands-free, using Siri. - Apple Pay and Google Pay
Digital wallet options like Apple Pay and Google Pay are increasingly popular among clients, who are using these features to pay for everything from online shopping orders on their desktops to coffee orders on the go. In fact, by 2026, the share of eCommerce transactions conducted by digital wallet is expected to rise to 41% in North America alone, even surpassing credit cards, which will account for just 23%.
Apple Pay and Google Pay is a new way for clients to pay online or in-person with their Apple Pay or Google Pay account. The payment process is seamless, secure, and extends a broader suite of payment methods that cater to the evolving payment preferences of clients.
Digital payments are also incredibly fast and easy for clients, who can pay conveniently online, through their phone, in-person, or use their stored payment info, to pay a bill. And since that payment information is transferred through a secure digital token, law firms don't have to collect financial information, improving payment workflows and minimizing fraud.
Clio is the only legal practice management provider in the United States to offer Apple Pay and Google Pay functionality for law firms and their clients. - Tap-to-pay
Legal professionals can now use the Clio mobile app as a mobile, tap-to-pay point of sale solution without need for additional hardware. Bills can be accessed in the app, and the tap-to-pay feature is accessed directly in the bill. Clients can hold their credit card or debit card to the mobile device — or their phone if they're using Apple Pay or Google Pay—to complete the transaction.
Lawyaw, intelligent document automation and fillable court forms software
- Questionnaires
With Lawyaw Questionnaires legal professionals create and share fillable forms or questionnaires with clients. Responses are effortlessly mapped to court forms or document templates as needed. With built-in review and approval features, the document automation process is simplified for clients and internal collaborators. Lawyaw Questionnaires minimize the back-and-forth correspondence when gathering client information, creating a seamless and client-centered process to the onboarding process. - Lawyaw New York State Bar Association Contact Packages
Clio has a new exclusive technology partnership with the New York State Bar Association to service Surrogate Court Form Products and will soon offer members access to NYSBA recommended forms and templates. This partnership will offer New York lawyers an advanced and efficient system for drafting court documents with greater efficiency and accuracy, including built-in references to easily complete forms. The contact packages will be available to members of the New York State Bar Association in early 2024.
"We're excited to introduce this series of product enhancements that will have an immediate, positive impact on the growth and operational efficiency of law firms, and meet evolving client expectations," said Hemant Kashyap, Clio's Chief Product Officer. "Just as important, we have a well-defined vision for tackling the next phase of innovation head on. Creating value for our customers is a long-term journey, and we will continue to deliver tangible benefits at every step. With Clio, our customers are supported in becoming industry leaders across all aspects of their legal practice."
Clio is transforming the legal experience for all by creating the world's leading cloud-based technologies for law firms—to keep lawyers and their clients better connected throughout the legal process. Firms of all sizes and practice areas use Clio products—Clio Manage, Clio Grow, and Lawyaw—to manage firm operations, streamline billing and payments, automate legal documents, and improve client experiences. Following its US$250M Series D funding, led by TCV and JMI Equity, and its US$110M Series E investment, led by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and OMERS Growth Equity, Clio has made history by becoming the first legal practice management unicorn in the world, and the first legal practice management company to be recognized by all 50 state bar associations. Learn more at clio.com.
SOURCE Clio
Media Contact: Mesila Malltezi, Communications Manager, 1-800-347-8314, [email protected]
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