6 Ways Clio Helps Evolve Family Law Build its Business

Building the foundation for a thriving business

Beau Atkins, CEO at Evolve Family Law, had used Clio at a previous firm and saw its potential in helping him start his own firm. Within two years, he built a team of 12 lawyers and supporting staff. Now, he runs a growing business that is continuously finding ways to improve.

Most importantly, Clio has helped lawyers at Evolve Law get more done while creating better systems to bill and collect payments from clients.

How Clio helps Beau and his team focus more on what matters

From the start, Beau knew that he wanted to run his law firm based on sound business practices. Clio has helped every step of the way to help make Evolve Law run more efficiently, with better client services, and to outstanding results.

1. Spending less time on document assembly with the help of automation

When Beau first started working as a lawyer, he spent a lot of time filling out forms by hand that had to be transcribed by someone else, which aside from being highly inefficient, had many problems.

With Clio, Beau and his firm set up all of their forms as templates that automatically connect to custom fields in Clio. This means that any client information that gets collected in Clio will auto-populate into forms that can be created instantly.

“Previously, we may have been able to justify the amount of time we draft documents for clients, but with the technology that’s available, it’s certainly less justifiable. I think everyone owes it to their clients, if not to themselves, to spend less time on it—and to their clients, less time billing for it.”

2. Seamless billing and 99% collection rates

Clio has helped Evolve Law improve how it bills and collects payments from clients. Since they started collecting fees online, the process of getting paid has become so much easier. E-signatures have also been instrumental in getting to that first payment.

“Previously, all documents were personally signed by clients, but now everything is signed electronically and put into the system automatically.”

3. Automated intake that’s quick and smooth for clients

Beau knew he wanted to make it incredibly simple for clients to onboard with his firm. Previously, coordinating email messages with his calendar and the administrative tasks involved with new clients often took days. Now, with Clio, the entire onboarding process, including consultation, takes just over an hour.

“I recently presented at the law school, and we walked through our intake process, showing how we use Clio. It blew them away how quick we were able to onboard and how smooth it was. We had a volunteer complete a trial onboard all the way through the consultation and everything, and we had it all completed within an hour and fifteen minutes.”

4. Templated communications are fast and easy to get out

Since Evolve Law deals with only family law matters, they’ve been able to standardize templated communications in Clio, which makes it easy for everyone to get emails out quickly to clients.

“Getting that message out to clients makes clients feel supported—and ditching the billable hour has allowed clients to really know that they can always email or contact us without driving up their bill.”

5. Task lists keeps everyone organized and efficient

Clio’s task lists work well with Evolve Law’s flat rate billing structure. As cases come in, they have templated workflows that get assigned out, which keeps the team on task, and nothing falls through the cracks.

6. The ability to work from anywhere

Evolve Law operates a hybrid office, giving staff the freedom to work from home when they want, while also giving them a collaborative office atmosphere to enjoy.

Clio is more than just a software company

For Beau, Clio and its community legaltech community reflects his firm’s core values for continuous improvement.

“I think one of the biggest benefits was the legaltech community. I took my entire team of twelve down to the Clio Cloud Conference in Nashville, and just the atmosphere, the energy, that’s been a huge plus. I love the caliber of speakers that come in the keynote. I also enjoy hearing about the Legal Trends Report.”

“One of our core values at my office is continuous innovation, and I’ve identified that is clearly something Clio stands for. Every ClioCon they are introducing new features. I’m always receiving pop-ups for new features and improvements.”