Clio Manage
Lawyerist Rating for Clio Manage
Rating Breakdown
Our Rating: 4.7/5
Our rating is based on our subjective judgment. Use our resources—including our rating and community ratings and reviews—to find the best fit for your firm.
4.7/5
What is Clio Manage?
Clio Manage is powerful, innovative, and user-friendly Law Practice Management Software (LPMS). It is a platform that welcomes, and encourages integration. This is one of its greatest strengths. Clio boasts an extensive App Directory, and an Open API. It works-and-plays well with an almost overwhelming amount of legal tech. Additionally, it’s one part of the entire Clio Suite. Which means you can seamlessly add Clio Grow (an intake CRM), albeit for an additional price.
Starting Cost: $39/user/month
- Cloud-based
- Integrations
- Customizability
- Basic Task Management
- Basic Templates
- Add-ons Needed
Clio Manage Features
Customer Experience & Support
/5
Price & Value
/5
Security
/5
Innovation & Future-Proofing
/5
Avoid for all things besides time keeping
We were told they could create simple forms that integrated with Wealthcounsel for intake and onboarding. After months of work and effort, they finally admitted that they could not do that. The amount of time they forced us to invest before finally coming clean and admitting their software couldn’t handle simple form intake seemed specifically designed to increase the pain of ending the service. Everyone continued to claim the simple things we needed were possible, but no one could deliver and kept punting to someone else. All the while, we were creating forms, task lists, inputting client and matter information and getting things ready to work and then they came clean. Customer Service is horrible and dishonest. I cannot stress how disappointed I was with the company and its sales focused business model.
Flawed
If your practice relies to any extent on merging documents from case-management templates, make sure you understand Clio’s limitations before committing to this software. We recently attempted to transition to Clio and discovered that the way that this software is structured makes it impossible to adapt it to our needs. We are a high-volume practice, which means that we rely heavily on document templates to get things done. In particular, we make a ton of medical records requests and have clients who may have a dozen different medical providers. Clio, in its current iteration, makes it impossible to generate these requests efficiently. The root of the problem is that the software only allows you to generate templates based on “matter” fields. It does not allow templates to be created based on “contact” fields. The result is that you essentially have to create a unique matter field and unique template for each contact in order to generate letters to the contact. This is more cumbersome than writing each letter from scratch. Or you have to generate a template and cut and paste all the relevant contact information into it, which defeats the purpose of merge templates. If you only write to “clients” or “opposing attorneys” or “adjusters” or some other entity to which it is easy to give a unique matter designation, then maybe Clio would be adequate, but that is not the case for us.
Clio does not even seem to understand the nature of the problem. Multiple people told us that document generation could do what we needed it to, but no one was ever able to show us how. Each demonstration ended in futility.
Good To Start With
Clio has been key in us growing from a two attorney operation to a now 6 attorney firm. It is simple to setup and get started. Also, for small teams the pricing is great. However, for the more robust features Clio can be pretty expensive for teams of 10 or more. In addition the reporting and mobile app are not great for management and owners. We do plan on switching to a more robust platform in the next year or so.
Great to start with. Can be a pricey headache for advanced management.
Awesome Program!
I’m the Office Manager/Bookkeeper for our firm and we love Clio! We’ve used it for about 3 years now and we are always finding new ways that the program can help our practice! I especially like how streamlined everything is and how easy it is to search all of the information contained in the program. Often times we would lose track of where something is saved in our old system and searches were not very complex – in Clio you don’t really need to know where to look – just type the contact name, document name, etc. in the search bar and instantly you are provided with results of every place that information is located or mentioned. I also, as the bookkeeper, appreciate the sync between Clio and Quickbooks Online – all of our payments entered into Clio automatically sync to QBO and all I have to do is create the deposit – no double entries! Big time-saver!
Love Clio
I’m the Office manager/paralegal for the attorney I work for and I absolutely love it. It is a great way to keep your cases organized and it can do so much!
Clio has changed my practice
I’ve been using Clio for about 6 years. It has, without a doubt, changed ny practice in a positive way. It helps me stay organized. My billing process is many times faster and more efficient than it was with the previous system that I used. I get paid faster. I keep better track of my billable hours (thanks to their easy to use mobile app). I also have a better handle on the productivity stats and other information that is important to my practice, thanks to their dashboard and reports. I love Clio!
Good all around practice management software
I’ve been a Clio customer since 2012. I find it especially helpful for time-tracking, billing, secure document sharing, and minimal document automation. I’d estimate it saves me dozens of hours of administrative work every month, and I’m not even using it at its full potential, given all the third-party software integrations the Clio team has made available.
Most Important Part of My Practice
I’ve used Clio since I opened my office over 3 years ago. After having used many other practice management programs in the 13 years before that, I can’t imagine using any program other than Clio. I love that regardless of the type of law you practice, there are so many applications that sync with Clio to help make your firm more efficient. Plus, I can access Clio from anywhere using my phone or tablet. I’m also impressed with the new Clio that was released last fall. It is faster than the last version and has some upgraded features. Clio has a great support team, so they always a click or call away. This program is so easy to use that even those who are not so “computer smart” can easily navigate the program. I recommend Clio to everyone I meet who needs or is thinking of changing their practice management program. I highly recommend Clio!
There is software and there is CLIO
We are constantly on the lookout for something better, and we have tried many other platforms. But we have yet to find a replacement for CLIO
Indispensable to my practice
My practice would not function without CLIO. It allows me to take my practice anywhere. The document automation allows me to handle a larger volume of cases without paying for a ton of support. Finally, CLIO is super responsive to any technical challenges I face and are proactive about making changes to their platform. Their support is second to none.
Great for our needs!
Clio works for what we need! We are a solo practice, and our lawyer believes in being mobile. We have 3 offices. We also have virtual paralegals to handle specialty work. We like how Clio integrates with ClicktoFile, Lawpay, and One Drive. I like how access to files can be restricted. So our specialty paralegals can only gain access to their files. Makes protecting the personal info of our clients more secure. Which the cyber security folks like! I have recommended Clio to many of my former colleagues in other firms. It works for us!
A Reasonable Choice for Solos
I handle my own time entry and billing, along with my own bookkeeping. For the most part, Clio makes that pretty easy. There are a few features lacking and a few bugs here and there. For example, there’s an issue with Clio when it comes to past-due clients. They can EASILY receive an invoice that tells them the full amount due (from current and prior invoices). But when they click to pay through Clio, they can only pay the amount of the current invoice — meaning that they have to go back and search for the original, past-due invoice to pay the older balance. The workaround — a manual email that provides the invoice as a PDF and gives a LawPay link instead. It’s not perfect, but it works.
It would also be nice if Clio allowed for more batch-entry items. For example, I previously used a platform that allowed you to do batch time entries to multiple client accounts. That was great for entering time at the end of the day from notes, etc.
It would also be nice if Clio gave transactional attorneys more choices in structure. I would prefer to be client-based than matter-based. But overall — I can work with it.
I’ve also found Clio support to be very responsive.
Great/Intuitive General Practice Management Software
With the exception of some of the billing features, Clio is a wonderful practice management software. The newly designed user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.
Some billing features are cumbersome and geared toward larger firms with more stringent formatting and hourly or trial basis requirements.
Great practice management software
I love 80% of Clio and Clio handles most of the needs of my firm. Document management integration and non-responsive support are my issues. Support is great when they can fix something immediately. Usually being escalated to the higher ups is a good thing but with Clio escalation seems to mean they are going to ignore the issue and just send periodic email updates saying “we’re working on it but no fix yet.”
Generating template documents in Clio is awesome, really quick and easy and a huge time saver. However, with the change to Clio Apollo the syncing with Microsoft One-Drive was severed and has been repaired and broken dozens of times. Support just responds someone is looking at the issue but we have no ETA on a resolution. This has been going on for six months and counting so my absolute love and adoration of Clio has been highly tarnished. If I did not absolutely love and adore the rest of the program I would have moved on months ago.
I do love the matter dashboard showing contacts, financials, matter details and it has its own feed tracking all actions such as calendar entries, notes uploaded, time entered and everything else on one page.
I like the reports, very easy to use and set up to be very intuitive to run.
I have found billing to be quick and easy but I don’t use any integrations so maybe the other review with billing issues has an integration that has slowed down, but works great for us and we are a seven figure law firm with over a dozen billing units.
Time entry is easy with several ways to enter time and the ability to quickly get a time entry box no matter what page you are on in Clio is great.
Calendar is good but has some areas that could be improved. The entries are very sensitive and if you hover over an entry too long it will stick to your mouse and be moved accidently. it would also be nice if you could make a one-time change to a series of calendar entries, such as our weekly management meeting – when someone is gone and the meeting is cancelled I would love to be able to delete just that week without deleting the entire series but unfortunately that is not a feature they have yet though I am told both calendar issues are being addressed and changes should be rolled out sometime this year along with some other functionality improvements.
It's getting there.
For much of what it needs to do, Clio is satisfactory but not exemplary. Some recent issues have really been bothering me. Particularly, our firm is now having files that are / were at one point clearly associated with clients and matters not show up in that client’s or matter’s documents tab. Big problem! They’re still floating out there because there’s a goofball workaround to still locate them in most cases, but the software has not been working right for WEEKS. Meanwhile, I reach out to Clio and all I get from them is “we’re looking into it.”
The Office 365 Plug-In is a welcome addition, but needs to be more fully featured. Click-to-File is still superior by a decent margin.
The mobile app is pretty crashy if you’re a firm with many people or a firm with a long history of files. Nearly useless for a 13 attorney firm with a few thousand open matters (including a partner who uses it for debt collection).
Speaking of debt collection, there is just absolutely no good way to track debt collection practice in Clio. They pretty well led us to believe that there was a good way to work this, but there isn’t.
But time entry is good and it works. The up-time is very good. Very few outages in our experience.
Great software
Clio is wonderful! Great for working across platforms. Always improving and adjusting to make a better experience for clients and law firm staff alike.
Clio- not perfect, but I like it
We moved our firm to Clio in about 2015 and have been using it ever since. It’s definitely not perfect, but for timekeeping, the client portal, and the LawPay integration it’s fantastic. Bills are clunky to generate, but once you get the hang of the process you can get pretty quick. Contacts management is possible the worst part; it does not handle multiple clients for the same matter well at all, it does NOT sync well with Google Contacts, and we have had an almost impossible time getting all of the fields we want into the contacts. Also, the program is NOT cheap, and it seems like we should get a lot more reporting capabilities than we do at our pricing level. BUT, those things being said, we still like it and I still think it was a better decision overall than any of the other practice management solutions we looked at.
The only law practice management *platform*
Clio is the only true law practice management platform.
What does that mean?
The fantastic team at Clio made a critically important decision early on. Their product does not try to be all things to all lawyers. Instead of doing a million things – and invariably doing them only okay – Clio sticks to a core set of features, and does them very well. Then, rather than doing peripheral features within the application, Clio offers an open API. This allows any other application to “plug in” to Clio. So if you are a bankruptcy or immigration attorney, there are apps available to re-tool Clio for your specific practice needs. That brilliant approach means that Clio can focus on doing a best-in-class job at it’s core features, while letting users eat their cake too by strapping on additional applications.
The New Clio, rolled our earlier this year, is phenomenally fast. I fully agree with my friend, Jordan (his review is above) that Clio’s support is outstanding. Any lawyer who uses Clio’s support as an excuse for (e.g.) not being able to generate bills is just masking his/her own incompetence. This application is so easy to use that it’s hard to imagine how you could screw it up.
Highly recommended.
New Clio is Deeply Flawed
My small California family law firm has been happily using Clio for about 6 years. However, with the new Clio updates it takes at least 10 times longer to generate a bill as it did under the original Clio. When we generate hundreds of bills each month, it is not a time cost we are willing to absorb. We’ve contacted Clio about the problem but they have been non-responsive. We are regrettably now shopping for new practice management software.
A great product and an even better team behind it
Your firm needs cloud based practice management software and Clio is the best option. It is not perfect, but it is really good and more importantly, they have an incredible team that goes above and beyond to keep improving. Think of Clio as the background database of your practice. All of the information for every single case you work on can be stored easily in Clio’s system. I have a case load of around 100 cases and I refer to Clio as my memory. Everything I need to know about a case gets put into Clio so that I don’t have to worry about storing information in my head (and Clio’s search feature is much better than my own memory recall).
No matter how you bill, what types of legal problems solve, or what types of clients you serve, Clio can be used to fit your workflow. And if you can’t do it with Clio, there’s probably an ad on that will sync to Clio. Probably the best thing about Clio is that they have opened up their program so that other tech experts can build tools that sync with Clio (like accounting and time tracking software). This has enabled our office to automate a wide variety of tasks including calendaring, task assignment, and document creation. And it really speaks to the core value of Clio that makes it so remarkable. Clio is here to serve their customers. They seek out customers to observe and learn how their product can be improved, then they take those lessons and implement them as quickly as they can. If you have any doubts about how responsive their team is tweet a question to @goclio and see how quickly you get a response.
In short, my clients love Clio, and I wouldn’t be able to practice at the level I do or with the enjoyment I do without Clio.