Clio

Avantages: Clio's intuitive design is easy to use for anyone from the tech savy to the "how do I turn this thing on" person. They are constantly adding features and functionality to the software solution making the administrative side of practicing law much easier and less time consuming. Clio's support team is always quick to respond and is always friendly and helpful. The growing list of integrations is definite plus and gives us the ability to extend the already great functionality to the next level. And if you are into coding, you can always create a custom integration to suit your needs.

Inconvénients: Really the only complaint I have about Clio is the reporting capabilities. While it has some great canned reports within the interface, there is no ability to customize reports to massage out information that would be useful to my practice. We make do, of course, but this has been my complaint for some time now. Last time I checked there was a pay integration that allowed for more robust reporting but adding yet another subscription isn't appealing when it would be relatively easy for Clio to add this capability to their platform.

Commentaires: Clio has allowed us all to access information we need from one place and pull customized reports that allow for better business planning. Honestly, it's one of the most user friendly client database software that I've ever used.

Avantages: What I like most about Clio and it's developers is that when there is a feature you believe would be a great enhancement and you suggest it to them, it seems like not long thereafter you have that enhancement.

Inconvénients: I cannot think of anything I don't like, honestly.

Commentaires: I have been able to delegate more to my support staff by using the different scheduling and tasking features without giving up on my oversight, since I can verify overdue tasks and completed tasks. Also, my staff has been able to manage my calendar through the case and firm calendar features which allows me to draft more and be able to schedule more hearings. I am in and out of the office most days and the cloud-based aspect of this software and mobile app allows me to keep track of my schedule, access my matters, and contact clients as needed. Overall my experience has been excellent; I moved from using 4-5 programs and apps to manage my practice, to using 2 because of the integration in the Clio suite. I have recommended this software to several friends and have help to train some of them on the basics while they were feeling it out.

Avantages: I like the fact that there are different levels of cost for the need of your business. I started with one user on the lower tier, then moved up to include more options and added a user. I like the fact that not only does it provide billing and payment integration, but, at the time I upgraded, it included the monthly cost to use Law Pay (which I have also found helpful).

Inconvénients: I feel there are some personal preferences I would like to use in my reports viewing and accounting. But there was a recent revamp rolled out a few months ago that did address some of my needs. Admittedly, although I have used the product for almost 4 years now, I have not watched all the tutorial videos or called with all of my specific questions, even though with the boutique package there is a dedicated help line.

Commentaires: If you're not used to a system, this can be made into a good system for you. There are a lot of functions missing--like being able to track time associated with flat fee activities (so you can't track productivity or if you do, you can't print out your billable hours without some discussion to the ethics board). You can track e-mails and phone calls, but not faxes, letters, or text messages. You can set tasks for others that you can update, but the update doesn't get sent to the other person. You can set pop-ups on your calendar for yourself, but not for other people. You can track the budget of a case, but not the running total of transactions or expenses. You can integrate with Quickbooks, but you have to import and export the information--the information does not flow freely between the two. The calendar has all of the same pitfalls as Google Calendar because it is Google calendar but with some functions missing. You can upload and download documents, and you must do that in order to save any changes with Clio (unless you pay for HIPAA-compliant Google Drive Professional). Your receptionist has to separately capture phone messages from your client to you because only you can have conversations. Wandering between the conversations page and the logs page means that you will always end up back in the Matters tab. If you're trying to capture a phone call with a person not in the system you have to exit the phone call and lose all of the information to enter that person before you can save the conversation to a file. It's not customizeable. There are some pros over Amicus but many features I miss (such as being able to track time directly with the phone call, including the time the call was initiated) but it has good parts about it. If you're into nitty-gritty capturing of information and you have the time to invest it can be a good platform but trying to teach established attorneys how to rework their legal practice around it is difficult.

Avantages: It's online.
The timer can be stopped and started easily.

Inconvénients: I spend about two (2) hours a day implementing workarounds to make the system work because it was not built for family law practice or file review. It's a good backup system but it's nothing very reliable unless you're willing to invest the time into making it work.

Commentaires: After 3 years, I am still working at discarding habits and practices built up over 25 years as a practicing attorney to better incorporate Clio's feature into my daily work flow. One of Clio's driving philosophy's is to make lawyers more productive with their time, and make lawyers services more accessible to persons that need legal advice. Clio's focus on providing multiple access points, including mobile apps designed from the ground up with these two goals in mind, will pay off for both Clio and my practice in the long run.

Avantages: The Clio platform is not intended to be a closed, proprietary system. Instead, it forms the foundation for the day to day management of leads, clients, time, documents, and billing, supplemented by almost 200 third party integrations, with new offerings coming on line each month. Clio offers unlimited cloud storage and IOS/Android apps making all of your firm information, clients, and documents available 24/7. Clio continues to innovate and as the leading provider to small/medium law firms throughout the world, I don't worry about whether they will be in business a few years from now. Finally, all, yes all, of your data saved in Clio is easily exportable should you decide to change to a different vendor.

Inconvénients: Clio's growth means that feature changes must be more fully vetted as they are used by more than 150,000 legal professionals. As they broaden their perspective to encompass larger firms, the pace of change may continue to be more deliberate. The movement and management of files without a third party integration, such as FasterLaw, is cumbersome. Clio's own integrations with Office365 for emails and calendaring remain a work in progress.