Clio

At LegalTech New York we announced Clio ClientConnect, a new addition to Clio’s suite of practice management tools that facilitates online client collaboration and receiving online bill payments via Clio’s sercure web interface.

The response over week since the conference wrapped up has been phenomenal - the following is a sampling of coverage from across the web:

At LegalTech New York, Bob Ambrogi, a prominent blogger and legal industry analyst, heard about ClientConnect and subsequently picked Clio as one of his Top Ten Tech Stars of LegalTech New York! You can see the interview with Jack Newton, Clio’s co-founder and CEO, along with the rest of the Top Ten Tech Star honorees, here.

Over at the HomeOfficeEnvy blog, Long Duong called ClientConnect a “game-changer” in the web-based practice management space:

Clio ClientConnect is a monumental announcement for Basecamp lovers who are looking for a comprehensive solution. The bill paying component sounds like a formidable challenge to Freshbooks as well.

Mazyar Hedyat, author of the PM Blog, summarizes ClientConnect nicely:

ClientConnect very nearly solves the universal problems that plague asynchronous multi-party communication. In other words, with ClientConnect there are no more e-mail roadblocks, mixed signals, or convoluted conversation-threads in the way of attorney-client communication. As a result lawyers can now make files of any kind, as well as time-sheets, notes, and case details available in seconds just by  recording them in Clio or uploading them to Clio’s super-fast collaboration-servers.

For those lawyers still on the fence, the advent of ClientConnect makes it hard to justify not trying Clio’s 30-day free trial.

John Harding, author of the Family Lawyer Tech & Practice blog, thinks Clio ClientConnect might be a final nail in the coffin of his aging Amicus Attorney install:

I am continuing with great interest to follow the evolution of the Clio web-based practice management application. More specifically, I am desperately looking for a replacement for Amicus Attorney, that means Clio gets my attention. Now I get more news that Clio may make my eventual choice. They have announced ClientConnect, which is a secure web-based client portal, allowing Clio users to share information and collaborate with clients through an easy-to-use online interface.

But it doesn’t stop there. ClientConnect also enables online bill-paying for the attorney’s clients. Attorneys simply send their clients a link to an outstanding invoice, and the client can easily pay the invoice via PayPal or other online payment systems.

Sean Doherty of Law.com wrote up Clio in his LegalTech New York 2009 coverage, commenting that features such as Clio’s ClientConnect are making SaaS “hard to ignore”:

Software as a Service is almost as hard to ignore today as Web 2.0, especially for solo and small firm attorneys looking for a low-cost method of law practice management.

A huge thanks to Bob, Long, Mazyar, John, Sean and all the others that helped generate so much buzz about the ClientConnect launch. We’ve been training Clio users every day on how they can use ClientConnect to communicate more effectively, collaborate more closely, bill quicker, and most importantly, get paid quicker. If you’re not already a Clio user, sign up for your free 30-day trial of Clio and ClientConnect to give it a try.