Clio is a cloud-based practice management system geared toward solo and small firm lawyers, helping manage everything from intake to invoicing. As a member of the Clio Certified Consultant program, Affinity benefits from intensive Clio training, and priority access to Clio’s technical, development and data migration teams. Such benefits further enhance Affinity’s cloud-based alternatives to traditional client-server practice management systems.

“Given its extensive experience in helping law practices run efficiently, we’re thrilled Affinity Consulting Group has joined the Clio Certified Consultant program. It demonstrates that legal IT consultants recognize the value and increasing popularity of cloud-based systems like Clio and the instrumental role they can play in helping their clients transition to the cloud,” said Clio CEO and co-founder Jack Newton.

“We are continually looking to strengthen our knowledge and expertise in the area of cloud computing and SaaS-type deployments,” noted Affinity Partner, Steve Best. “Joining a cloud-based legal software pioneer like Clio gives us more opportunities to better advise Affinity clients when it comes to their web-based software strategies and deployments.”

About Affinity Consulting Group

With six offices nationwide, the Affinity Consulting Group (ACG) offers a variety of legal technology services and software solutions spanning all aspects of law firm practice management including document management and automation; case and financial management; accounting; imaging; and litigation and trial support. In addition, experienced legal technologists offer law firm technology audits as well as software and hardware selection consultations. ACG’s Affinity University offers a wide spectrum of advanced legal-specific training classes delivered via live web seminars or available on-demand.  ACG’s 40 person team is dedicated to the legal industry and has decades of experience as attorneys, litigation paralegals, law firm network administrators, firm administrators and technology experts.

Visit www.affinityconsulting.com, e-mail Alison Lukan at alukan@affinityconsulting.com, call 877-676-5492 or follow on Twitter @affinitytech.

About Clio

Clio is a comprehensive web-based practice management product specifically designed for solo practitioners and small-to-medium-sized law firms. Clio can be accessed using PCs and Macs as well as mobile devices including iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

Secure and easy-to-use, Clio provides case/matter management, time tracking, billing/reporting, client contact and document management, task scheduling, trust accounting, and detailed reporting. In addition, Clio includes Clio Connect, a secure portal for exchanging information and collaborating with clients, and Clio Express, an offline time capture application.

Clio is based in Vancouver, B.C., and was founded by Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau in 2007. Visit www.goclio.com, e-mail info@goclio.com, call 1-888-858-CLIO or follow on Twitter @goclio.

We did a co-hosted webinar with Chrometa earlier this month, and on Thursday, May 17 we’re doing a co-hosted webinar with ZenCash.

Collections are often an overlooked aspect when starting a solo or small law firm, and a time-consuming aspect of running a law firm. This is where ZenCash steps in. ZenCash allows you to automate your collections process, with an added customer service benefit. And thanks to the Clio Platform, our API, it syncs with Clio so it knows what invoices remain outstanding.

So come join Brandon Cotter, the founder of ZenCash, and our own Support Trainer to learn how Clio and ZenCash automate your collections process.

Tell us a little about how you started.

I went to law school because I wanted to put sex offenders in jail. I didn’t become a prosecutor though. I found other work more interesting and wound up finding I just didn’t have the stomach to handle either side.

I learned about solo practice as an option in law school, and was more attracted to it. I’m a child of a small business person. My father ran a fishing tackle artisan shop out of the home, so I grew up in an environment of self employment as a normal part of life. I didn’t make the connection with solo practice until law school. Jay Foonberg’s book was the drug “Keeping and getting good clients.”

After graduation, I worked in a medium sized firm, learned a lot there but knew in my heart I was ultimately going to setup my own practice.

I’ve been licensed in Maryland since 1994. I set out on my own in 2009, and before that I did a variety of work, from corporate support in DC to a broad-based middle class full service law firm, business and tax advice to criminal defense to traffic court, assisting large firms in international cases.

That’s quite a variety.

It is. So my background is an odd mix of different experiences. I’ve help represent billion dollar corporations and homeless people. I decided, for family reasons, to set up my own practice in 2009. I now have flexibility to be with my children.

Nice. What did you use before Clio?

I didn’t fully perceive the need for a comprehensive system for practice management. Things that Clio does, I did through various means without thinking of them as something that could be unified in a practice management set, particularly one like myself could access.

Big firms had systems that stayed on their servers, and I’m familiar with some of those programs like Needles. I once worked with one enormous and bulky program and found it cumbersome and difficult to learn. An unhelpful tool. But it didn’t occur to me that there was something I could access.

For escrow accounting I use Quickbooks, which is poorly designed for escrow accounting. I put notes in a paper file. For calendaring, I used Google Calendar, and still do but now it integrates with Clio. To do lists are kept on my cell phone or scrap paper.

So I didn’t have a good unified system. I still got my work done but it wasn’t the quality of time keeping and follow through that Clio has helped me achieve. In 2009, when starting, I had fewer files than I do now, so the need for something like Clio is more urgent now than it was in 2009, even though Clio was very helpful.

What made you decide on Clio? Did you try out any other solutions?

I heard about your esteemed competitor Rocket Matter, and I have nothing bad to say about them but I tried Clio, and the design was pretty intuitive. Things seemed to make sense in Clio. Tried it out, set up a sample client, entered data and it was simple. No unnecessary bells and whistles. I like simple tools.

What I liked about Clio was its intuitive design. I’m a picky guy, few things I’d like to tweak or relabel, but as a whole it was simple and efficient. Stored what I needed to store, presented what I needed. It’s easy to access, and I can use it from my iPhone. Reports it generated, for the most part, what it did, it did well.

It’s accessible without a whole lot of barriers. You don’t need to read a manual to learn it.

And if I made a mistake, fixing it was easy. I’ve worked with programs where if you create a mistake, the mistake becomes unfixable, causes further problems and you have to call support for what is really a simple data entry error.

Timeslips, if there was a billing mistake, you were stuck with the mistake forever. Clio is a much more forgiving system, it seems. So I began to use it more, decided on a file numbering system, made it easier to correspond between data in Clio, physical file folders and my escrow management. Reconcile and create report confirming reconciliation of escrow accounts ethical requirement. Clio made that task much easier.

I look forward to Clio’s continuing advancement of product.

What problems did Clio help your firm solve?

Escrow accounting Clio has helped with a lot. Makes escrow reporting easier.

One of the great things that Clio has done integrating with Dropbox. Not just in terms of Clio having just a storage capacity, but its ability to receive documents from Dropbox. I set it up the other day, and once I got in there I realized oh wow! This is incredibly powerful! The documents usually integrate with the Matter files, and I was stunned at how good it was. I started clearing out material from my hard drive into Dropbox knowing it would go into Clio. I’ve started setting a file in Dropbox for client archiving material, a way to get it into Clio.

It was like Indiana Jones looking at the Ark: Wow. I’m a big fan of that.

Integration with Google Apps is helpful. Integration with Google Calendar is helpful as it acts as a calendar backup.

Diligence is impossible if you don’t know when something is supposed to get done. And my malpractice carrier asks me every year “do you have a calendar?” “does it have an independent backup?” Yep. Backs up to phone, Google and Clio. Calendar system constitutes compliance with that concern of liability carriers. Half of malpractice has to do with calendar and clock. Number of days to file a motion, statute of limitations, etc.

And the statute of limitations function in Clio is an extra moment to check the date. Great thing. Adding that one alone was a morally upright act by Clio, for the interest of the entire bar and clients. One more opportunity to make sure the date doesn’t get written incorrectly. There’s an extra warning.

One thing that would be helpful would be if Clio can create an escrow reconciliation report that goes back to the beginning of time, all clients past and present. Great thing to be able to do. Also create report for specific client. Great thing to be able to do. If it were able to identify clients open, or positive escrow activity in last 30 days, I could do an analysis but have that print out from part of the reconciliation report. Instead, I cut and paste off a screenshot, essentially, the clients that are now closed.

I think I follow. Can you give an example?

Baker and Delta were closed clients back in 2009, so escrow account balances are $0. They still show up in current report if I print it out. If I want to incorporate data into a current activity report, I have to spend a lot of time grabbing the data, throw it into a Word doc, then go through and itemize. Open or closed client? No activity, closed client so I cut it out of the report.

It’d also be nice to have a search function that would allow removal of clients that are closed or have $0 balance, no activity in 90 days or a $0 balance for 30 days so clients that are essentially in the archive do not get commingled with current, active clients.

Ah. OK. Will make a note to pass on that suggestion. So, what did you find to be Clio’s most valuable feature?

For me and my low overhead, light practice, most valuable feature is probably the simplicity of keeping track of accounting per clients, escrow and operating per client. The per Matter escrow and operating accounting features are the most valuable to me.

I can see an argument for others. The to do list is pretty good. System for setting up Matters is pretty good. Numbering systems are good for keeping track of files. Having Clio’s numbering system become my numbering system has made administration easy.

Per Matter escrow accounting single most valuable feature for my own practice model. Close with that is the Billing functions, which I regard as integrated with escrow.

What benefits have you realized from Clio that you didn’t anticipate?

It’s an intangible one. The benefit is the psychological benefit of debraining my practice so my brain is only engaged in the things its good for.

With everything I’ve got going on, running this practice, being a father to my children and having some type of personal life, trying to have what in the 11th grade we would’ve referred to as “having a life.” The more I can disengage my brain from anything the better. If I don’t have to remember something, I shouldn’t have to remember it at all. Should be recorded outside my brain. Using Clio to store Matters, having it be the repository for Client Notes, to do lists means my brain is not trying to be a hard drive, not trying to be an online cloud storage.

Now, legal analysis, judgement calls, my brain is free to do that. Shouldn’t be using lawyer brains as storage memory, not for work. We shouldn’t be remembering the name of a witness. Clio should remember it. And then we can go back and get that data.

Clio lets me use my brain for what it’s good for. I can disengage my brain from things that Clio is better at doing.

Have Clio & “the Cloud” changed the way you practice law? If so, how?

Don’t know that it’s changed the way I’ve practiced law as a whole. It’s changed how much I enjoy practicing law.

Clio makes it easier to move towards paperlessness. Indirectly, Clio handling the admin back end has given me more confidence and willingness to take on cases that were a little tougher. I kind of straightened my back and say “yeah this is actually something I can take on.” I was intimidated by the shear administrative burden of a case. Now I know that I can trade punch for punch.

I handled a federal wage case against Jackson Willis, the same firm that Walmart uses. They were very professional but tough. Having Clio increased my confidence to be able to say “yeah, I can fight these people.” I can go to federal court where the stakes are high, even though I’m a solo with no employees. Wouldn’t have taken on without good administrative backup from Clio.

How did you find the process of getting up and running with Clio?

It wasn’t too hard. Signing up was fairly easy. Payment method is straightforward. Sometimes it’s a little unpredictable what day of the month payments will debit the account but it can be weird to look at the bank balance and say “gee that doesn’t make sense.” Not a big deal but sometimes surprising. Might be helpful if Clio were a little more swift in its clock billing.

There is a difference between setting up and getting comfortable with it though. Took a little while to get comfortable but a good deal less than if I’d bought Amicus Attorney. Getting generally accustomed to the Clio interface didn’t seem to take too long. Fairly straightforward.

Has Clio improved your firm and the service you offer your clients?

I believe it has. It’s made it easier for clients to get documents. Sometimes I share documents, with some clients. There’s the communications email portal, and email address created for every Matter. I’ll CC it on ordinary emails so that they land immediately into Clio’s backup.

Have you had any experiences with Clio’s support team?

Yes. Just the other day, there seemed to be a problem with the physical layout. Either Clio or the browser, not sure which one it was. Gave me some advice on clearing my cache, which didn’t make any sense but they’re Support, but whatever happened it went away. Menu bar at the top of the welcome screen was misaligned so buttons were unclickable, sliding them below the image that’s part of the welcome screen. Don’t know what it was, in the browser or something experimental Clio was doing, I couldn’t get it to go away. But Clio Support was helpful, do this, do this see if it goes away, was very happy. A pleasure working with them.

Would you recommend Clio to your colleagues?

Yes, and I have done so and will do so again. Meeting with a young law student who wants to setup his own practice. Still in law school but starting to think “what do I need to do now” and when I meet with him for coffee, he’ll probably ask “how do you do it,” talk about escrow, marketing, what tools I use, website hosting, what practice management I use.

Mac or PC?

Macs exclusively.

Eighteen months ago I wanted to upgrade my computer and I’d be using a PC. In college I used Macs exclusively, and I had heard a number of good things about lawyers using Mac, and decided I wanted one.

I didn’t want to have to deal with viruses, the bugginess of Windows annoyed me. Not that Macs are perfect, but I made the choice to buy a Mac laptop, and I’m extremely happy with the choice. Everything a Mac prints can be a PDF, which has saved my practice an untold amount of time and money on conversion software. Saved my practice a great deal of aggravation, too. I like the style of the Mac, I like it’s efficiency and it’s intuitive interface.

On the heels of launching its Clio Platform and integrations with Chrometa and ZenCash, solo and small firm lawyers using Clio can now share Activity descriptions, and set rates at the User, Matter and Client level. These features help solo and small firm lawyers see not only what they’re spending and making on Client-related Matters, but also on administrative tasks and other non-Client Matters.

In addition to granular rate control, Clio announced improved flat fee support. Users can more easily set flat rates, or use other alternative billing methods instead of the typical hourly billing method.

“Capturing time is a challenge for any solo and small firm lawyer, and we’ve made it easier to do so. Being able to set rates at both the Matter and Client level adds another layer of flexibility so that solos and small firm lawyers can easily bill at a flat rate, or see how much time it really takes to complete a Matter before opting for a flat rate. The easier it is for them to get a handle on their time and bill appropriate, the more successful their firms become,” said Clio co-founder and CEO Jack Newton.

Clio also announced improvements to Clio Express. First introduced at ABA TECHSHOW in 2009, Clio Express has evolved into a time keeping tool that tracks time when offline, and syncs when there’s an Internet connection. Solo and small firm lawyers can work on the go even without Internet, and not have to worry about tracking and recording time.

A big change in Clio Express is its upgrade from Adobe AIR to HTML5. Instead of being a desktop app, Clio Express runs through Google Chrome, even when your offline. No need to run another desktop app. You can track time in Chrome as you keep working.

Currently Clio Express is only available through the Google Chrome Web Store.

“Many of us are so used to always have the Internet at our fingertips, it can be frustrating to not have it, whether on a plane or stuck at an airport with no Wi-Fi or even during an extended power outage. Clio Express gives our users that added flexibility to still record time spent on client work even when they don’t have Internet,” Newton said.

With Clio Express, granular rate control and improved flat fee support, Clio gives solo and small firm lawyers the tools necessary to track time and record time, and better manage their businesses.

About Clio

Clio is a comprehensive web-based practice management product specifically designed for solo practitioners and small-to-medium-sized law firms. Clio can be accessed using PCs and Macs as well as mobile devices including iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

Secure and easy-to-use, Clio provides case/matter management, time tracking, billing/reporting, client contact and document management, task scheduling, trust accounting, and detailed reporting. In addition, Clio includes Clio Connect, a secure portal for exchanging information and collaborating with clients, and Clio Express, an offline time capture application.

Clio is based in Vancouver, B.C., and was founded by Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau in 2007. Visit www.goclio.com, e-mail info@goclio.com, call 1-888-858-CLIO or follow on Twitter @goclio.

While there are apps to help manage them, there has not been an integrated solution for the solo and small firm lawyer. Thanks to the Clio Platform, Clio’s Application Programming Interface (API), and launch partners Chrometa and ZenCash, solo and small firm attorneys can eliminate these pain points with an integrated solution.

“With the combined Chrometa, Clio and ZenCash solution, solo and small firm lawyers now have the ability to automate much of their time capture and collections process,” said Clio co-founder and CEO Jack Newton.

Chrometa is an easy-to-use application that silently captures attorney’s billable activity – from emails to phone calls to document drafting – and turns this information into time records. Before the Clio Platform, Chrometa data had to be exported, and then imported into Clio manually in order to generate a bill. With the Clio Platform, a click of a button in Chrometa automatically syncs the time entries with Clio.

“If you’re like most attorneys, you probably just want to make sure you capture all of your time, bill for it, and manage your practice without any headaches. You want your time and billing systems to ‘just work,’” said Chrometa CEO and co-founder Brett Owens.

Now that you’ve automated and imported your time from Chrometa, and generated a professional-looking bill with Clio, what happens if your client doesn’t pay on time?

This is where ZenCash steps in.

Once you sign up with ZenCash it, lets your establish your collections workflow. You create a timeline of automate bill reminders, such as letters and phone calls, based on invoice status. You can reward early payment with thank-you notes, adding another touch of customer service, and direct delinquent accounts to a collections agency.

And since ZenCash syncs with Clio through the Clio Platform, it knows what bills remain outstanding.

“Late and non-payments are not something you typically account for when setting up a practice, but it’s a huge pain point for law firms of all sizes,” said Brandon Cotter, founder and CEO of ZenCash. “Just like any business, it’s critical to have a plan in place to collect on payments. With ZenCash, in just a few clicks you can automate your entire receivables process—and thanks to our tight integration with Clio, you can do it in a way that fits within your existing workflow.

By leveraging the Clio Platform, Chrometa and ZenCash greatly simplify the process of maintaining your billable workflow.

If you are a third-party developer interested in building on the Clio Platform, visit http://api-docs.goclio.com for information on how to get started.

From time to time, it’s helpful to know what a Client owes you versus how much the Client has in Trust. To check this in Clio, you simply run the Matter Balance Summary Report, and check the box for “Show Client Trust Balance?”:

Doing so shows all open Matters with outstanding balances as well as the amount the Client has in Trust.

Got a tip to share? Let us know. We’d love to hear them!

On Thursday, May 3, learn how during our co-hosted webinar with Chrometa CEO and co-founder Brett Owens.

We’ll demonstrate the new and exciting API integration between Chrometa and Clio, helping better automate tracking and capturing your time. Since Chrometa runs in the background, it records your time on whatever you do, from opening and composing email, drafting a document, answering phones, conducting meetings or anything else you do during the day.

Learn how to capture time by using the Chrometa interface, and import all of that information directly into Clio at the click of a button, making easier to bill your clients in just a few clicks. This easy to use integration could help your firm manage your time tracking even more efficiently than ever before.

If you update a Matter to have a custom Matter numbering system, and upload a document from Clio to Dropbox, Dropbox will ask if you want to create a new folder. And then, when you create the new folder, all of your documents are switched from the older folder to the new one.

So, for example, let’s say you have a Matter, “00001-Smith,” that has four documents in Dropbox, and you want to change the Matter number to something more descriptive, like “Smith – Assault.”

When you do that, Dropbox asks: “Would you like to change the new Matter number?”

Yes! OK.

And by doing so, Dropbox creates a new folder called “Smith – Assault,” moves the four documents from “000001-Smith” to “Smith – Assault” and also adds the new document you uploaded to the Matter.

Got a tip to share? Let us know. We’d love to hear them!

That got us thinking. Last year we mused on whether or not the tablet spells the end of the desktop, and it occurred to use that the focus on been on the death of a device when it’s not the device that is dying, but the way in which it is being used.

Before the cloud caught on, most of the information we needed to access was stored locally on the desktop. Applications. Files. Photos. It rested somewhere on our hard drive. And there was only so much space on the hard drive. With the cloud, information has moved from the hard drive to servers run by someone else, and thus freed up hard drive space. Perhaps more importantly, the cloud freed us from sitting at a desk, typing up a document, blog post or responding to an email.

Be it from a laptop, tablet or smart phone, a fair amount of every day tasks can be completed without a desktop.

This point was made in a Google+ thread:

prashant tripathi
+Kimberly Peacock it’s not the end but this is going to happen damn soon. I use my desktop (or laptop for that matter) for two main reasons:
a) running an application to perform a job (word processing for instance).
b) storing my stuff (songs, movies for that sake). Now comes the cloud which is going to grant me both of these wishes.
So why on earth will I go back to good’ol laptop/desktop then? The only thing which I will need then will be an interface (like your cell phone or chrome book) to connect to the cloud.

Notice a device, be it a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone is still needed. So the devices themselves aren’t dying, just the way in which they are being used.

With Google Drive, as CIO posits, the “personal cloud” moves mainstream:

“Personal cloud is far more than just storage; it’s synchronization, it’s streaming, it’s sharing files. Those ultimately become more important to the consumer than things like the personal computer,” said Gartner Research Director Michael Gartenberg. “The age of the personal cloud becomes far more important than the personal computer.”

So will the service be more important than the device we use to access the service, or will the device start to play more of a role in the service we choose to use?

The latest #GoneClio Podcast highlights Paul “Woody” Scott, founder of The Scott Law Firm, based in Louisiana. Jack and Woody talk about Dropbox and its integration with Clio, disaster recovery and how digital and the cloud can save on overhead in your firm.

Listen:

Paul “Woody” Scott, The Scott Law Firm