Clio Cloud Conference 2018: Highlights From Jack Newton's Keynote

It wouldn’t be a Clio Cloud Conference without an action-packed opening keynote from Clio CEO and Co-founder Jack Newton. As always, Jack offered plenty of insightful commentary on the state of the legal industry and legal tech, and delivered a number of exciting announcements from Clio.

Read on for highlights from this year’s opening keynote, including:

• Celebrating Clio’s 10th anniversary
• 2018 Legal Trends Report insights on today’s legal consumer
• Clio’s new product offering and the acquisition of Lexicata
• New Clio features for 2018

10 years of transforming the practice of law, for good

The sixth annual Clio Cloud Conference opening was especially poignant, as Clio celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2018. Jack took a look at how Clio has grown over the past decade—from a team of two to a team of over 300 serving 150,000 legal professionals in 90 countries—maintaining an award-winning culture all the while.

With relationships with over 66 bar associations and law societies, over 120 app integration partners, and a standing as the only legal practice management solution placed in software comparison site G2 Crowd’s leadership category, there was a lot to cover.

Jack also looked at what Clio customers have accomplished over the same time period. From improving access to justice, to building law firms around a core vision, to freeing the wrongfully convicted, there’s plenty to be proud of.

As Jack explained, Clio’s mission to “transform the practice of law, for good” is a deliberate double-entendre that speaks to having both a profound and positive impact on the legal industry as a whole.

On that note, Jack also looked forward to the next 10 years and beyond, and what possibilities still lie ahead.

In search of a better client experience

Over the past 10 years, Clio has learned a lot, not just about the needs of lawyers, but about the needs of their clients as well. According to Jack, there’s a significant gap between what lawyers think their clients want or need, and what those clients actually want.

“We’ve got an unbelievable opportunity to bridge this gap, and we think, an opportunity to unlock an enormous amount of growth for the legal space,” Jack said.

Insights from the 2018 Legal Trends Report

To illustrate his point, Jack took a look at a few findings from the 2018 Legal Trends Report, the latest version of Clio’s annual industry report. Specifically, he dove into the Net Promoter Score (NPS^®) of the legal industry (at a very high level, NPS^® is metric used to track customer satisfaction based on responses to the survey question “on a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend my services to a friend or colleague?”).

The Legal Trends Report this year put that number at 25. When benchmarked against other industries, the legal industry is in good company with airlines, banks, credit card companies, and wireless carriers in terms of NPS^®.

Meanwhile, high-growth, successful companies like Netflix, Amazon, and AirBnB all happen to have a high NPS^®, and Jack explains that they got there by providing an effortless experience to their customers.

“Amazon has made it unbelievably easy to order any item from a universe of products and have it on your doorstep in some cases on the same day,” he said, “and it decided that making it one click was maybe too much of a friction-ful experience, so it actually added voice commands and introduced a whole line of products around Alexa to make ordering products as easy as uttering a few words.”

How can law firms deliver effortless experiences and tap into this opportunity for growth? Jack suggests that this comes from putting customers first.

Introducing the legal industry’s first client experience platform

The client experience encompasses the whole client journey, which starts when clients first discover your firm, consider hiring you, and retain your services, to when they close their case and potentially decide to become a repeat client. Up until now, Clio has focused on just one piece of this experience—managing those who are already your clients. Looking forward to the next 10 years, that’s all going to change.

“We really need to be thinking in a more comprehensive way about how we solve for this entire customer journey, and how we help you deliver a better client experience across every touchpoint along this journey, rather than just the time spent working a case,” Jack said.

To that end, Jack announced that Clio will be offering a new product, expanding its existing practice management solution to a more comprehensive multi-product suite focused on the full client experience.

Lexicata and Clio Grow

Jack was proud to announce Clio’s acquisition of Lexicata, which as part of Clio’s suite of products will eventually evolve into the more advanced Clio Grow.

“We think this is a transformative moment, not just for Clio and our platform, but for the industry as a whole, and we’re so excited to have Lexicata join the Clio team,” Jack said.

As one of Clio’s most popular integration partners over the past five years, Lexicata has long been the leading provider of client intake and client relationship management (CRM). With more than half of Lexicata’s customers already using Clio, the acquisition was a natural progression for the two companies. As Lexicata evolves into Clio Grow, law firms will have access to a new client engagement solution that will sync seamlessly with Clio’s existing software.

“While Clio helps you execute well on the work you have for your clients today, Clio Grow will be a product that helps you find new clients for tomorrow,” Jack said.

Clio Grow will launch in early 2019.

Learn more about Clio Grow.

The Clio Referral Network

To support Clio’s commitment to helping lawyers grow their firms, Jack announced the Clio Referral Network, which launched at this year’s Clio Cloud Conference. The Clio Referral Network empowers Clio users to take advantage of Clio’s customer base by seamlessly referring cases to other Clio-using law firms.

Clio’s Referral Network helps lawyers build their relationships while helping to connect clients with the legal services they need. Even if a client doesn’t fit your firm’s practice area, passing them along to someone else helps ensure a positive interaction with your frim—and creates a potential new contact for down the road.

Learn more about the Clio Referral Network.

New Clio features

Of course, there were plenty of exciting announcements regarding Clio’s practice management platform as well. Here are a few of the new updates and features highlighted in Jack’s opening keynote:

• Clio Launcher. Just released, Clio Launcher is a new feature that allows you to open, edit, and save documents directly within Clio in just a few clicks—no downloading or uploading required.
• Clio Payments updates. This year, Clio introduced automated payment plans, enabling law firms to offer more flexible payment options to their clients with ease. The ability to create secure payment links was also added, allowing law firms to direct their clients to a secure page, via a link, where they can pay their bills online.
• New Outlook Add-in and new Gmail Add-on. Legal professionals now have access to new features and added capabilities with the email add-ins they already know and love.
• New Calendar. You won’t believe it until you see it!
• New AR Aging Report. This report provides a better view than ever into firm receivables with added abilities to sort and filter information.
• Evergreen management. Clio’s evergreen management functionality makes it easier than ever to set up and manage evergreen retainers with trust balance notifications at your firm.
• Document Full Text Search. Coming soon, Jack announced that Clio customers will have the ability to quickly search for a document by its title, metadata, and its full text contents from Clio’s global search bar—helping legal professionals to effortlessly find their desired information much faster.

Jack also announced the beginning of a new Clio mobile app. The technology behind Clio’s iOS and Android apps is being rebuilt from the ground up, and one key change customers will notice is that iOS and Android users will notice is that they receive new features concurrently. Interested in trying it out? Sign up here!

Finally, Jack touched on Clio’s App Directory, which now features over 120 new integrations. “The rate of new integrations being added to this directory is only accelerating, and it provides you an enormous opportunity to level-up your law practice,” said Jack.

That’s it for Jack’s opening keynote this year! Head to cliocloudconference.com for more conference updates!

We published this blog post in October 2018. Last updated: November 10, 2021.

Categorized in: Clio, Technology