lawyer

#Clio Law Practice Management Review: Taking Clio for a Test Drive

In my last post, I looked to do an in-depth comparison of different law firm practice management software. Today, we re going for an in-depth review of one of the more popular practice management software applications out there, Clio.

I ve been meaning to try different law practice management software applications out there. In forums like/r/Lawyers on Reddit I ve come across practicing attorneys who give glowing recommendations of Clio and other web-based practice management software.

Pricing

Getting Started

Functionality

Creating new matters and contacts is extremely easy. It’s also easy to merge client contacts from Outlook or Google to Clio. No complaints there. As I test this I get hesitant that as I add my contacts and start creating new matters in Clio I’ll get attached to Clio and never leave. I guess that’s what keeps them in business, offering 7-day free trials.

After testing several other competitor products and coming back to Clio, I have to say that Clio s integration / merging of client contacts from Outlook and Google is seamless and perfect. Clio handles it the best.

Okay, so this is extremely easy to use. Some of the more appealing features include getting reports by client or revenue and tracking my bank account activity. I can even create a report that tracks my productivity by client.

As for documents, Clio lets you upload your own documents and assign them by matter, integrating with third-party online storage sites like Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive. It also lets you create auto-forms so if you have a lot of cases that require the same type of document, you can quickly fill it in and send it. Clio also works with revision history, so you can have multiple versions of a document and see the changes made from one version to another (a necessity, I think).

I personally am a big fan of Dropbox and Google Drive. The fact that Clio integrates with both of them is a big plus for me, and completely unheard of. None of the other competitors in the space integrate with both Dropbox and Google Drive.

Clio has some features for e-mail correspondence, allowing you to have outgoing e-mails BCCing Clio and then have them automatically sorted into matter folders. But, to get to that point I needed assistance, as it wasn t clearly spelled out how to do it.

Document Automation

This is one of my favorite features, and a must for law firm practice management software. Say you have a document / form that you use over and over again for example, a real estate closing form, a summons, or a particular type of agreement, where everything is the same except for the client s name and contact information. Clio can automate this for you. Clio lets you upload a form / template document and create fields in the document. So, later, when you want to use the form document for a specific client, the document is automatically created with the data fields populated from your client s stored contact information. It s so easy to do and a huge time-saver. This one feature alone can be worth the entire package.

Support

Support is one of those overlooked features: You assume that customer support should be good; and, you assume that you should probably not have to need to use customer support. However, while tinkering with Clio, I didn t know everything there was to know about Clio, so I gave their support line a call. They took my call immediately and walked me through how to use Clio. Really excellent customer service. Very patient and friendly. They wanted to help me out.