TrustRadius Insights for Clio are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Convenient Timekeeping: Several users have found Clio's timekeeping feature to be convenient and easy to use, allowing them to track their billable hours effortlessly by simply pressing a button.
Intuitive Interface and Billing: Many reviewers have praised the new interface of Clio for being user-friendly. They specifically mentioned that the billing feature is intuitive and makes the billing cycle for clients easier, ensuring bills get paid and retainers get replenished with ease.
Extensive API Integrations: Users appreciate Clio's extensive API software integrations, which allow for robust customization of the practice management solution. The developer partnership program has been highlighted as very good by many customers.
My law office uses Clio as our CRM, matter and lead management, accounts receivable, and as an email marketing tool.
Pros
Matter management
CRM
Billing and accounts receivable
Cons
Lead organization in Clio Grow should not be separate from Clio Manage. These two should be integrated for better organization and management.
Trust payments in billing
Likelihood to Recommend
Coming from another Legal CRM and case management system, Clio is a dream come true. I can easily tag contacts, imput case data, track tasks and matter stages, record billings and send clients links to easily pay bills, attach and save important documents to matters that automatically sync with my company server, and so much more. These features improve office efficiency and productivity.
After an hour with support today their solution is to stop using my iphone for calendar and contact integration. I'm told this is the leading product in the segment. I recommend returning to paper and pencil.
Pros
reasonable visuals
good if useless support
Cons
In my opinion, clumsy
In my opinion, convoluted
In my experience, fails to integrate
Likelihood to Recommend
They are charging me $2,842/yr for two seats. Today I was told not to use my iphone for contacts.
Clio was our firm's client and file management system. We also attempted to use it for accounting.
Pros
In my opinion, easy to navigate
Cons
In my experience, extremely poor integration with accounting software (Quickbooks)
In my opinion, extremely poor customer service and onboarding
Likelihood to Recommend
In my opinion, Clio has a slick website and it makes Clio come across like it will be intuitive and streamlined. Instead, I think it makes simple processes overly complex.
In my experience, the advertised "integration" with accounting software is completely nonexistent. As a result, in my opinion, Clio will not simplify processes for a small firm. In most instances, I think it adds an extra step.
We were excited to on-board with Clio as we were making the leap from PC Law. It has, however, turned into a nightmare for our small firm as our local data, which we have spent tremendous time and money providing to Clio has been mistakenly uploaded by that company onto foreign servers - with no concrete plan to get it back, take it down or correct the situation. We were advised last week that our situation was being "escalated" - and only today received a request for access to our account. VERY DISAPPOINTED with this experience.
Pros
Texting Function
Nice Interface
Good on-line help videos
Cons
Sales people over promised and underdelivered
Communication w/ support has been difficult (empathizing with no concrete solutions)
Likelihood to Recommend
The integration and on-boarding has been atrocious.
My review of Clio focuses on one "functionality" of Clio. When I was making my decision on which document management system to use, the search function, specifically the content search function was incredibly important to me as the previous DMS did not have a good search within feature. I told the Clio sales person that this was an important feature and I was told how incredible the feature is.
As I have used the product for nearly 16 months, I was noting that many of my documents were not populating in various searches I was running. I initially excused this as user error. When it became clear to me that I was spending far too much time looking for documents, I began to explore this further. (Here is one example: I was sitting in a mediation with a client and began looking for a document in Clio. My client found the document faster from her cell phone than I could using Clio because the document search I was running would not populate my document. I had to dig around through folders in my client file to find it, which is incredibly inefficient).
As I became increasingly frustrated with my inability to find documents, I finally reached out to Clio, first through the chat function. I explained my issue and was told that they could not help me through chat and that I would need to call them. I called them (5/22/23), and referenced my ticket number, but was forced to go explain everything again. I was placed on hold for at least 25 minutes, only for the support person to come back on the line and make it clear to me that she still did not understand the issue.
I performed a screen share to show her that what was going on was not user error. There is a glitch in Clio's system. It is not how I saved the documents. I was able to show her several examples. I also told her various ways the search functionality was far weaker than what was promised when I was sold the product. She could not assist me, but assured me that she would get back to me by the end of the day after connecting with backend support.
The email I received from her was that she still did not know what was going on. She asked for me to provide her with dates and times we could connect to do another screen share. I sent her those dates and times and she was not available and offered no alternative dates. She again tried to claim that this was user error and explained some of the most rudimentary things about document searches. Days later, and much time wasted, I have no resolution and nothing scheduled to correct this issue. Support takes too long to assist and get back to you.
Looking into other DMS now.
Pros
Document templates
E-sign feature
Cons
Document content searching
Narrowing document name searching
Likelihood to Recommend
Matters are easy to open, document templates are a great time saver, but the failures in the document search function (previously described) remove any time savings offer through other functionality.
We attempted to use Clio in all cases, but it is missing basic features, such as feasible calendar features, appointment notification, useable client note capabilities. We ended up returning to Google Docs for most uses, because the free software absolutely trounces the supposedly specially designed software for the legal profession. I can't get support to contact me back, and the basic features I suggest to make the software useable for a small firm are not a priority. Basic Google products: Drive, Calendar, gmail, are free and beat Clio with a stick.
Pros
Document Merge
Big Promises
Simple processes become complex
Cons
Basic calendar notification customization
Multiple client calendar event support
Return contact from account manager within a reasonable timeframe
Flexibility for small practices
Honest sales promises about the limitations of the software
Client file basic note documents: I can either put every note in a different document (useless since I'll have to open every one to read the case history) or I can use a "note" which inexplicably opens over like 1/6th of the screen. It's like trying to do a survey through a periscope.
Use google drive instead. It's free and it's so much better.
Likelihood to Recommend
Firms with like 4 clients who should probably just use paper. If you're going to court for one or two clients at a time, the clunky calendar function might be able to keep up. If you have any substantial number of clients on the same docket, forget about it. Use Google Calendar instead and hire someone with the money you save by not using Clio to send them all text messages.
Horrible Experience. I was specifically told that Clio Grow would allow me to create forms that would then integrate into Wealthcounsel. Was told that it was routinely done and that lots of estate planning attorneys used Clio solely because of its integration with WealthCounsel. I spent countless hours over 2 months setting up the system and creating forms. I told our IT team to hold off on form generation for the new website because Clio would handle it. After speaking with countless people and departments at Clio, they finally admitted that there system only pulled the main contact in, that their forms only allowed one contact to be pulled in. Could not make form fields optional so you had to have a different form for a family with one kid, 2 kids, 3 kids, etc. And a different form for married or unmarried people. They would constantly make promises that they would get it fixed, then come back a week later and still had no idea what they were doing. The sales team is clearly required to have the customers on the hook for two months to get their commission and the tech team is also trying to get you to invest as much time as possible to make the decision to leave more painful. Even the billing is difficult to manage. The online pay system is more expensive than other providers. It's difficult and cumbersome to edit bills.
Pros
Logging in
bating you to spend more money and time
Cons
Horrible customer services
dishonest representation of what their system does
Clio is a practice management solution for law firms. In my opinion it has sufficient features and scalability to serve as the basis for anything from a solo practitioner to a mid-large firm.
Pros
Clio has an extensive API that allows for very robust customization. If you are looking for a practice management solution that can be adapted to your practice, Clio is very adaptable, and their developer partnership program is very good.
Clio's billing and payment systems are well executed. It is very easy to ensure that bills get paid and retainers get replenished.
Clio has an extensive documentation database and good support.
I have not noticed any significant bugs in their system. Everything functions as expected without any significant outages.
Clio's security features and systems are well thought out executed.
Clio's user interface is intuitive and easy to use.
It is easy to find expert setup and customization assistance.
There are multiple existing 3rd party integrations to choose from.
Cons
Clio's trust account management system does not allow for sub accounts. For instance, if your firm wished to separately account for your general retainer and a settlement check as being separate sub accounts held in the main trust account for that matter, Clio does not have a way to do that.
Clio does not allow a "User" custom field. If you wished to be able to assign a team of users to particular types of files, there is no way to do this. For instance, if you wanted to add a custom field for "Billing Manager" to denote which of your multiple billing clerks was assigned to that file, there is no way to do this.
Clio does not allow you to create custom fields that are "lists" or "collections". For instance, if you wanted to add a custom field called "heirs" that was a list of contacts, there is no way to do this, other than to add in a series of single contact custom fields. (Heir1, Heir2, Heir3, Heir4).
Clio Grow, the Clio CRM pipeline tool, has a online intake tool, does not have an API to allow customization like Clio Manage does.
Although clio does have a document template generation module, the lack of any ability to handle lists or collections of items limits its functionality.
Likelihood to Recommend
Clio is great at making things look pretty. I believe the actual way that the data is stored and the way that the UI interacts with the data, particularly with the contact data, is horrifyingly convoluted. I would strongly advise against using Clio, but if you do decide to use Clio, you should keep a running back up of all your contact data, as I have identified several ways in which Clio will delete, alter, or add extraneous contact information through just the normal use of their UI in ways that are counter-intuitive I believe.
Clio is used for accounting & billing of 200+ clients at present.
Pros
Integration with LawPay
24 hour customer service
customization of bill layout
Cons
No ability to apply payments or credits unless previously billed, even if earned
No ability to print client NOTES (I have used post-its and more recently Excel worksheets)
Difficulty in correcting matter names
Inflexible bill formatting, our bills show history back to 2020 when we opened and go for pages
Reports are lousy. Customization limited. Have to export to Excel to sort.
Tech writers completely uninterested in improving, unlike TimeSlips & TimeMatters.
Likelihood to Recommend
Great if you have a simple setup; a few large billable clients who never pre-pay and to whom you never offer a credit or want to customize a bill format. Terrible if you have clients who don't pay - you have to keep sending them the last bill that they received even if dated months prior.
We utilize Clio and Clio Grow for overall client management and billing. total use for client data, contacts, billing, trust management
Pros
client managment
document managment
electronic billing
trust accounting
Cons
operating account for nonrefundable retainer
inclusion of intake ability without adding on Clio Grow
texting to clients without having to add on other programs
Likelihood to Recommend
Clio has a great deal of bells and whistles meaning it has the ability to do a lot, customize to your firms needs. However they are still missing up to date necessary remote work features like texting, video chatting etc within the platform
