Educated Attorney Software Review: Clio

January 5, 2013

Clio Firm Management Breakdown Video

Clio is firm management software solution based in the cloud. Clio’s average law firm is 10 users but their largest is 40. I guess you can say that according to Clio, it scales easily. Clio lacks some law firm accounting needs so they made it possible to export data into QuickBooks. They are currently working on a way to export to Quickbooks Online, but currently only Qucikbooks is supported. This is strike one for me. Why would you have your cloud solution only support a non cloud accounting solution? It’s good that they are working on it for the future but why not have everything in the cloud? They don’t even support more popular law firm accounting software like PCLaw. This is an issue because changing a document management system is one thing, but changing your accounting software is completely different. If you want to use this software, you better be using QuickBooks, if not then move on, that’s basically what they’re saying.

One thing that Clio does very well are the document management features. Upload document into Clio and they automatically receive matter numbers. You can also associate documents with clients and make client folders. Each file change you upload acts as a revision, creating a history of changes for that one particular file. Things like this are bonuses and come in handy. Their document management system even works with Google Drive if you’re a Google Apps user. All data is stored on Rackspace servers and replicated with 4 data-centers across North America for redundancy. The best yet is that there is no limit on the amount of data you can upload. Clio also syncs with Outlook contacts, calendars and tasks.

Since Clio is a cloud solution it’s only natural that they support mobile access. Clio supports iPhone, Android, Blackberry & Palm through their mobile website. Through a Smartphone, their site is fully functional. Clio offers a 30 day full functional trial and they also have phone support through Canada from 8am to 8pm EST. Now that you finally know all about Clio, and I advise you to watch the video above for even more info, we can finally talk about price. Since Clio is a cloud service, they have monthly packages. They charge $49/month per attorney and $25/month per support staff. No wonder they have firms that average out to 10 people. It’s probably 4 attorneys and 6 support staff making their monthly bill about $350 on top of other backup costs to backup any localized firm data as well as accounting data since Clio doesn’t do that. Also, I have no idea how their large clients work. Quickbooks maxes out at a certain point, and there comes a time when law firms need to reassess their billing software once they get on the large side. While you do not need a server with this, you will need a backup solution, so there’s the savings. Clio seems to be a good solution but I really can’t tell you one way or the other without using the product. It sounds to me that you use this product in the beginning and then move to a better server based solution once your firm grows a bit. With every product there are people who hate it and people who love it. If you’re interested, I would ask to speak to some clients that they have and ask them about the features they hate. If you can live with those issues then go for it after trying it out. If not, then move on, there will definitely be more firm management cloud solutions on the horizon.