Clio

For a reasonable price, Clio includes a number of useful features in one package: DocuSign capacity, billing, trust accounting, document creation, hourly billing tracking, and of course management of cases and case loads.

Clio's method of running credit card or ACH fees and then tracking them is a bit frustrating. I do appreciate the fact that the fees are not taken from the trust fund.

Clio used to have responsive and helpful customer support, but that was years ago! It was once easy to track and link payments to client matters, run useful reports, and handle cloud-based documents, but recently the software has seen nothing but bugs.

Clio is plagued with bugs and its cloud-based document system stops working entirely every few weeks or so, requiring a complete reinstallation of the desktop launcher. Clio also, without any notice at all, removed certain features that allowed for the linking of card payments from Clio Scheduler (a sister program), retroactively recharacterizing ALL prior card payments in a completely different manner and ruining my firm's entire accounting system overnight. Clio tech support is worthless and is never aware of any issues brought up to them about the software, no matter how debilitating the issue may be, and they endlessly put you on hold to "talk ton their team" while stalling and asking for more screenshots of the issue, only to tell you a week later that they can't help you. The software has fallen far from grace and serves only to be a very expensive patchwork of buggy integrations, paired with tech support that doesn't understand any of the details of their own program.

Clio is a great foundation for our firm. I am a long time Clio user, over 13 years now. I have seen it grow and improve. Some things have stayed the same - excellent customer service, minimal to no downtime. It replaces at least one full time employee with the automated reminders, calendaring, etc. Not only do I organize my digital client files in Clio, I track all my payments and trust accounting, I am able to have team member accountability through task tracking, we have regular and effective communication with the clients through the Clio Client portal. When I'm using Clio, it helps me be a better lawyer, it helps me focus more on my clients, and keep my clients happy through great communication.

While it has all the basic features in a package to choose from, there are parts you have to pay to add on. Clio Grow for intaking new clients, meshes great with Clio Manage but it does have an extra cost. The document template feature that is built in is okay, and the add-on Clio Draft is supposed to be a lot better but it's at additional cost and a bit difficult for me to intuitively figure out. It's costly to have Clio, but it does save having an extra employee and saves from missing a deadline and having client's complain due to lack of communication, so to me it's worth the cost.