Clio

TechnoLawyer’s Seth Rowland, a legal technology consultant and practice management expert, has issued one of the most comprehensive reviews of Clio to date to the TechnoLawyer mailing list. Seth is a nationally known technologist whose company, Basha Systems, has helped many law firms build customized practice management and workflow solutions.

Seth’s review is both comprehensive and balanced. A small excerpt from the review:

All of [the training for Clio ] was done in a relatively leisurely one-hour — a stunning achievement. The tagline of Clio is “Practice Management Simplified.” This captures the essence of Clio. All of the basic tasks that constitute legal practice management are presented to the user in an elegant, cohesive, and intuitive system.

In reviewing the system I thought of my brother-in-law, Nathan, a solo practitioner with two paralegals. His
practice is a mix of personal injury, real estate, immigration, and criminal law cases — high volume, but
small documentation with an active calendar and extensive notes to file. Nathan has no time to learn, configure, and support a full-blown client-server system. Clio would be perfect for him. At $49/month for each attorney, $25/month for each paralegal, Clio would cost him $100/month. All he would need is three computers connected to the Internet; he would not need a network, a file server, or any software on his desktop other than Microsoft Office and an email client.

If you are still using Excel to manage your time sheets and Outlook to manage your calendar and tasks, you should look closely at Clio. If you have a “workgroup” with all your files shared in the “My Documents” on a “John’s Computer,” you should look at Clio. If your concept of automated backup is a USB attached hard drive, you should look at Clio. If you don’t want to pay for the services of expensive consultants like myself, you should look at Clio.

If you’re a TechnoLawyer subscriber you’ll have the review in your inbox; if you’re not, sign up for TechnoLawyer today and you’ll receive access to back-issues of the TechnoFeature (including the Clio review).

Thanks for taking the time to write the review and for providing us with great ideas on continuing to improve Clio Seth!