August 30, 2010
Clio’s own Jack Newton will be joining Slaw as a weekly contributor starting next week. Look for Jack’s posts to cloud computing, practice management, and other legal technology topics. Jack will also try to stop referring to himself in the third person in his Slaw column.
Thanks to Steve Matthews and Simon Fodden for the opportunity.
August 24, 2010
We’re happy to announce status.goclio.com, a quick, easy, and reliable way for Clio customers, partners, and certified consultants to check on Clio’s availability. While we aim to provide 100% availability, status.goclio.com will provide us a means of communicating the cause and expected resolution time for any unexpected downtime. Planned outages for upgrades and maintenance will also be communicated via status.goclio.com.
status.goclio.com is hosted outside of Clio’s main infrastructure, so it will be immune to any network, power, or server issues that might affect Clio’s main cloud computing sites (thanks to our friends over at Twilio and Google for providing the infrastructure for status.goclio.com).
August 5, 2010
Vancouver-based Themis Solutions Inc., provider of cloud-based legal practice management offering Clio, today announced that 30 new consultants have joined the Clio Certified Consultants Partner Program (see list below). A mere two months after announcing Clio Certified Consultants Partner Program’s six inaugural consultants, the program has grown six-fold, and now has a membership of 36 consultants spanning 21 of the United States, as well as international markets including Canada and Ireland.
With this new crop, Clio welcomes more legal technology luminaries including John Heckman of Heckman Consulting, John W. Olmstead of Olmstead & Associates and Nerino Petro, Practice Management Advisor for the Law Office Management Assistance program of the State Bar of Wisconsin. In addition to seasoned legal technology experts, Clio has attracted new types of partners, such as CPAs who provide virtual services to law firms, law firms launching side businesses in IT consulting, and academic institutions.
According to Nerino Petro, “The Clio Certified Consultant training provided an in-depth look at all of the many useful features in Clio. I walked away with a detailed understanding of how the many parts of Clio work together to form a unified practice management product. I highly recommend the training for anyone who supports Clio users. It’s also a great opportunity for those using Clio to gain advanced knowledge of the product and start using it effectively much more quickly. With interest in cloud computing and web-based solutions continuing to grow in the legal community, it’s refreshing to see products such as Clio and others seeking to serve the solo and small firm law office market.”
New Clio Certified Consultants include:
Inaugural Clio Certified Consultants include:
Clio President and Co-founder Jack Newton comments, “Clio is incredibly proud to have attracted such an incredible range of both veteran and emerging legal technology industry consultants to our Certified Consultant program. Legal technology consultants recognize the shift to cloud computing is one of the most important and transformative shifts to occur in the legal technology space in the last twenty years, and that the Clio Certified Consultant program is a great way to capitalize on this opportunity while delivering an innovative solution to their clients.”
For more information or to apply for the Clio Certified Consultant Program, visit www.goclio.com/consultants.
About Clio and Themis Solutions
Clio, a comprehensive cloud-based practice management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, is specifically designed for solo practitioners and small law firms using PCs and Macs. It can be accessed from any Internet-enabled computer or mobile device. Secure and easy-to-use, Clio provides case/matter management, time tracking, billing/reporting, client contact and document management, task scheduling, trust accounting, and performance metrics for independent lawyers to benchmark their business goals. In addition, Clio includes Clio Connect, a secure portal for document sharing and collaboration with clients, and Clio Express, an offline time capture application.
At LegalTech in February 2010, Clio accepted a Law Technology News LTN Award for excellence in practice management software, a prestigious honor determined by the votes of LTN’s subscribers. Clio was also selected by TechnoLawyer as “Best in Show” at the ABA TECHSHOW 2010 and ABA TECHSHOW 2009. In addition, more than 95 percent of Clio’s users said they would recommend the software to others according to the company’s latest Customer Satisfaction Survey. Clio’s parent company, Themis Solutions Inc., is based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company was founded by Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau. Visit www.goclio.com, e-mail info@goclio.com, call 1-888-858-CLIO or follow on Twitter @goclio.
August 5, 2010
Today we’re happy to feature a case study written by Andrea Cannavina, owner of LegalTypist, provider of virtual assistance services to the legal profession. LegalTypist has an expansive network of highly skilled US based Digital Assistants servicing the administrative needs of law firms. For additional information, visit www.legaltypist.com, call 866-846-2195 x104, or e-mail support@legaltypist.com.
Solo and small law practices often need administrative help, but in many instances, not full time help. That’s where I come in. My team of LegalTypist Digital Assistants (DAs) assists my clients in a variety of tasks, from typing notes to organizing contacts. We specialize in the legal space and know how to best implement a workflow that gets the work done in a quick and efficient manner. The best way for me to help my clients achieve their goals is by using Web-based technology. Thus, the second and maybe the most important part of my job becomes helping my clients upgrade to a digital workflow. By assisting my clients with the implementation of Web-based technology, I provide them with a secure route to access their information from anywhere, as well as cost savings. Most importantly, I provide them with peace of mind.
I maintain an extremely high standard of ethics, security and quality in my business, and apply the same standards to the technology I select to help my clients manage their information and meet their business needs. When I look at technology, I make sure to be proactive about security; I understand my clients’ concerns about their information being safe.
To start, all LegalTypist-recommended technology must be U.S.-based or their data storage devices must be located in the U.S. Once data travels outside the US, it is no longer covered by U.S. privacy laws. Additionally, I prefer if a web based technology is backed up using geo-redundant servers, so if anything should happen in a particular region that causes the technology’s servers to go down, my clients can still access their information. Of course, having dedicated servers which are only physically accessible through strict security protocols are another must.
In 2009, I began researching Clio as a practice management solution for my clients. Clio not only met all of my rigorous security requirements, but it also proved to be a well-designed and highly organized method for my clients to manage their law practice and easily work in tandem with their off-site assistants.
One such client I recommended to Clio was Jessica Foley. When I began working with Foley she was paying to use a different web based technology to manage her solo law practice, but she wasn’t happy with the software. According to Foley, “It didn’t have the right setup for me – it wasn’t user friendly and it didn’t have the ability to link to my Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) account, which was one of the things I really needed in my practice management solution. In a nutshell, it was hard to use and couldn’t keep all my financials organized.”
I suggested to Jessica that she move to Clio and she has been a happy user ever since. It took her virtually no time to learn to use Clio. As she says, “Clio is extremely powerful, and more importantly, intuitive to use.”
Foley uses LegalTypist and her assigned DAs to help her manage her law practice and keep track of all her information. Foley notes, “Clio really opens itself up to multiple users in one account. I call into LegalTypist and use their technology to dictate notes and then one of the DAs puts my notes in Clio for me. My LegalTypist DA also enters in contacts for me and links them to each matter. They also help me keep my calendar straight. With my LegalTypist DA and Clio, I can finally keep my practice organized and all my information is in one place. Clio keeps a running tab of my day – I can glance and see what’s going on. I can add contacts and link matters to my schedule to make it easy for me to organize everything I’m doing and quickly access everything. I never have to root around for information.”
In addition to being able to link and keep track of all her activities, matters and what is going on in her day, Foley also uses Clio to help her track her time and bill her clients. She keeps track of her billable time using Clio Express, a desktop application for time and expense tracking, and Clio’s timer feature on her iPhone. Using these features ensures that Foley never loses a minute of billable time, yet adds no additional work to her day. At the end of the month, all the timesheet information is right there for Foley to bill her clients.”
I recommend Clio to all of my clients who are looking for a better, more efficient and secure way to manage their law practices. The best part about Clio is that it ensures you don’t have to worry about not being able to find where you saved your notes or put a phone number – all the information is right there.
As LegalTypist, I pride myself on old-fashioned service expertly paired with the right technology to securely and properly get any US-based law firm’s work done. Clio’s technology aligns with those goals and that’s why I recommend it to my clients.