Are you wondering if the Clio cloud-based software is worth it for attorneys? Are you considering applying for a job? We have done another investigation into the Canadian legal tech company, Clio.

We have investigated some of the largest legal companies, including Lawyers.com, Diamond and Diamond, and Co-Op Legal Services. The reason we make these articles is to better inform the public about what’s good (or not) in the legal industry.

To recreate a balanced review of Clio, we have also read the online reviews of the companies and written about some of the criticisms. Most companies have good and bad ones, and this company is no different. If you want to read the online reviews of the company (we focus on the negative) skip to that section.

At a high level, Clio became popular because it is a web-based app, which means that you don’t have to download anything. It’s very easy to use.

Another thing that took Clio to the next level was the file-sharing function. The problem is that many lawyers are not good with tech, and they struggle to use this function.

What is Clio Cloud-Based Software?

Clio is most certainly the largest legal tech success story in Canada. They own the cloud-based legal practice management space. Headquartered in Vancouver with hundreds of staff, the company was a first mover in the cloud space.

There are 1.3 million practicing lawyers in the U.S., 80% of which are in private practice. Of that, 50% are solo practitioners, meaning they are the only lawyer at their firm. Before Clio, the only practice management systems available were outdated, server-based solutions that were costly to purchase and manage. 

The old-school practice management systems required extensive hardware and IT support. This put them out of reach for small to medium-sized law firms. Law firms needed time-tracking software that didn’t break the bank.

How many lawyers use Clio?

More than 250,000 attorneys around the world now use Clio’s technology to run their law practices.

Clio originally fought with various Law Societies and Bar Associations when they first came to market. But over time they were able to win the hearts and minds of the Law Societies by explaining that lawyers already used the cloud.

The Law Societies were originally afraid that clients’ information would not be safe on the cloud. However, the Clio founders explained that email systems like Gmail and Outlook already used the Cloud.

Over time the Bar Associations and Law Societies started cooperating with Clio. The software allows users to use calendars, track their hours, manage their documents and share them with clients, do their bookkeeping, send out invoices, and get them paid.

History of the company

The company was founded in 2008 around the time of the Great Recession. Rian Gauvreau and Jack Newton created the company. Rian was the IT/coder and Jack spent his time speaking and writing about the importance of the cloud to try and change lawyers’ opinions.

Mr. Gauvreau had been working at a large law firm in Vancouver (Gowling WLG) and had an idea. Rian and Jack teamed up and went to speak with someone who worked at the LSBC (Legal Society of BC.) They found out that many lawyers were getting into trouble with the Law Society because they were having issues with managing trust accounts.

With the pressures of running a law firm and handling their client’s legal issues, law firms had a hard time doing data entry and also missed deadlines. This led to investigations and even lawyers being disbarred.

The big law firms were much more organized. They had software solutions to help them keep track of things. But at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per year, not to mention the requirements for internal servers and IT support, these solutions were out of reach for many small firms.

This was a problem that Clio cloud-based software wanted to solve. It was time to improve the legal industry.

Legal Trends Report

Rian and Jack got to work to create the V1 of Clio. Both were working full time, Rian at Gowlings Law Firm as their IT support.

With support from their first investor located in Germany, things started to grow quickly. George Psiharis joined the company as one of the first employees and helped run the operations. This was critical to Clio’s growth.

Both Jack and Rian’s wives also joined the company. Jack’s wife helped design the offices, and Rian’s wife was the CFO.

After five years of success, Clio started the Clio Cloud Conference (Clio Con). More than 1400 attorneys attend the conference each year.

In 2016 Clio started the Legal Trends Report, which has since become the industry resource for statistics about running a law firm. It provides key metrics each year from anonymized data from the Clio platform. This was pioneered by George Psiharis.

Rian and Jack didn’t know it at the time, but they were building a company that would one day be worth around two billion dollars. Now the company has over three hundred employees. More than 140,000 lawyers use Clio’s software. Venture funds are lining up to invest in Clio.

A Brief Timeline of Clio

2008- The company was founded and debuted at the ABA Techshow.

2011- Clio sets up its first office in Vancouver.

2013- Clio launches an iPhone App and organizes the first Clio Con conference. They also open in Ireland and Toronto.

2014- The company has 100 employees.

2016- The Legal Trends Report is launched.

2017- Hits 200 employees. Over 1000 attorneys attend Clio Con.

Clio Online ratings 

Photo: Screenshot of the Google Reviews for the Vancouver Clio office

We focused on any negative reviews we could find. As you can see, Clio has a 4.4-star rating, which is great for a large company. But we wanted to discuss some negatives to make this a balanced and helpful review of Clio.

It’s not clear what Lauren Lens is talking about in the picture above, and why she thinks the software is terrible. But for the second review done by Mara Veneman, this is a common reason that Clio gets 1-star reviews.

A lot of people complain about the billing practices of software companies. It’s hard to know if the allegations are true. This is because Clio doesn’t respond to online ratings. I will reach out to Clio to see if they will comment on these negative reviews in this Clearway article. All companies should make an effort to respond to Google Reviews.

Next, we will look at Clio’s cloud-based software reviews on Glassdoor.

Photo: Clio’s ratings on Glassdoor (317 reviews)

Clio Cloud-Based Software Reviews

Glassdoor reviews are for those who work at a company, not for customers and clients. The idea is that employees who worked at Clio leave reviews for people thinking about working there.

As you can see in the next screenshot, Clio has a 3.9-star review on Glassdoor.

The Glassdoor reviews seemed to either be 3-star reviews or 5-star. There were very few 1-stars. Many people say it’s a great place to work and build your skills. Many people also talk about how nice the people are who work at Clio.

Clio will IPO soon?

The main complaint seemed to be that the company worked their staff to the bone, and has become “more corporate.” This makes sense, as Clio may IPO soon (they completed their series D round.)

Many staff who worked there when it was a start-up are likely having a hard time dealing with the “coldness” of the business turning into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. 

Some employees said that there is plenty of work/life balance, and others said employees are pushed to burnout. Mental health being harmed was a common theme in negative online reviews.

Photo: Screenshot of more of the Glassdoor reviews. There are also a lot of reviews of Jack Newton, the CEO of Clio that you can check out.

Up next we will look at Clio’s Indeed reviews.

Photo: The reviews for Clio on Indeed (4.1 stars)

It seems that the online ratings tend to average around 4 stars across various websites. This gives Clio a “good-great” rating according to many platforms.

On Indeed, Clio is highly rated for work/life balance and culture, but with lower ratings for advancement and management.

Clio Cloud-Based Software products

Despite some negative reviews, Clio’s story is inspiring.

While there were some initial doubts over the security of the cloud back in 2008 when Clio started, almost all attorneys now accept it. Simple economies of scale have led cloud computing vendors to invest aggressively in security infrastructure that is more secure than what small-to-medium-sized firms would be able to invest in. Because of Clio, lawyers’ clients are now more secure.

Clio has three main products that they offer. These are:

• Clio Indeed
• Clio Manage
• Lawyaw (they bought this company)

We will go into each of these products below and explain how to log in. A lot of people seem to do online searches for how to find the login page. We will therefore provide some helpful screenshots.

Attorneys use the software from intake (onboarding new consultations and clients) to getting their invoices paid. It’s meant to be a complete system for all of the attorney’s needs. It’s also meant to make things easier for the clients of law firms.

Lawyers use the software for:

-Creating a new contact (potential client) before the consultation

-Sending out retainer agreements after the consultations

-Opening a new file once retained

-Receiving the trust funds from the clients

-Keeping track of billable hours

-Sending out documents for the client to review (sharing)

-Sending out invoices to get paid

Is Clio Software Good?

Clio has a client portal that allows lawyers to invite their clients to log in with one-time links. Lawyers can also use their calendar entries function to keep track of time.

Attorneys can create bills and share them with clients. It’s also possible to receive payments and then generate financial statements/reports using legal tech software.

Clio claims that over the past decade, attorneys using their software have:

• Created over 38M contacts
• Opened 15M new files
• Drafted over 70M documents
• Billed $32 billion

Photo: A screenshot of the Clio cloud-based software page describing what Lawyaw offers

As can be seen above, Lawyaw helps attorneys do automation. Clio bought the company after working with Lawyaw in what was probably a joint venture for many years.

When lawyers used Clio products like Clio Grow, they used the technology that Lawyaw built. This is the tech that allows attorneys to auto-fill their documents. Lawyaw was a San Francisco company, and the CEO has now joined Clio as an executive. 

At the time of the company purchase, attorneys had used the software to make over two million legal documents.

Clio Pricing

As you can see above, there are currently four different tiers.

• EasyStart
• Essentials
• Advanced
• Complete

It seems that Advanced is the most common. But I guess that many people also sign up for Essentials. Most law firms will want both Clio Manage and Clio Grow together.

It wasn’t clear what the massive advantage of Advanced over Essentials was. If you have 10 attorneys at your firm, Essentials will already cost you $699/month USD, which might be enough of an expense. If you went with Advanced, $999/month might be too steep. 

It’s not exactly clear which package Clio Manage fits into above. Perhaps Clio Manage is just the EasyStart option?

We went to the Clio website to confirm. Yes, Clio Manage is the basic package. You can see this below.

Once you purchase the basic package, you can log in to Clio Manage below.

Click on “log in” and then the following screen should pop up.

You can then click on Clio Grow or Clio Manage.

The reason why we cover this is that a lot of people search for how to log on. Hopefully, this is helpful!

Is Clio Cloud-Based Software Secure?

The company has said that in addition to investing in a comprehensive cybersecurity insurance plan, Clio has undergone several initiatives to provide the most secure data environment possible.

It’s unclear if the cybersecurity insurance plan would pay out to lawyers if there were a breach. Make sure your law firm is covered under the plan and not just Clio.

Below are some of the cybersecurity features that Clio has:

-All Clio staff undergo extensive background checks to identify any risks.

-All data transmitted from the Clio app to their servers is sent using encryption.

-They are audited daily by McAfee Secure.

-Every year they work with a penetration testing company to test if they can be hacked.

Is Clio a Good Company?

We hope you found this guide helpful. There was a lot of material to cover, and we just brushed the surface. Contact us if you want us to do more deep diving into Clio.

It makes sense to sign up for the Clio seven-day free trial. See if you like it! If you want to do more research before reaching out to Clio, you can watch the video below.

But at the end of the day, nothing beats just trying it out for yourself.