Clio Cloud Conference 2016: Day One Highlights

The fourth-annual Clio Cloud Conference opened with music and dancing in Chicago this morning. With 700 attendees, it’s the largest Clio Cloud Conference ever, and there were plenty of inspiring and informative talks to take in on the first day.

Here are a few highlights:

Jack’s Keynote Speech

Clio CEO Jack Newton gave a rousing opening keynote speech at this year’s conference. After sharing Clio’s inception story—and talking about how he and Clio Co-founder Rian Gauvreau almost went into aerospace engineering—Jack introduced Clio’s Legal Trends Report. It’s the first truly data-driven report on the legal industry.

He also spoke about a few exciting new features in Clio—including a recent mobile app redesign—and announced Clio Apollo, the first ever ground-up redesign and rethinking of the Clio web app.

For more details, check out our recap of Jack’s speech.

Growing with Clio

Clio’s Steven Silberbach shed light on some key Clio integrations and features that are useful for firm growth. These included

• Lexicata, to automate client intake
• Clio Payments, to get paid faster
• Clio Connect, to communicate securely with clients and co-counsel
• Matter Budgets, to maximize realization rates

Data Insights

Expanding on Jack’s announcement regarding the Legal Trends Report, Clio’s George Psiharis dove deeper into the data. He spoke about the importance of access to data for the legal industry, the importance of responsible data collection, and the need for the legal industry to become a more data-driven profession.

Firms are competing for real estate in Manhattan so that they can get closer to where the transatlantic cable ends, because they want to get their data microseconds faster than their competitors. What about the legal profession? Are we measuring our access to data in microseconds? I certainly don’t think so.

Will we ever get there? Maybe not, but I think the current state of affairs is something that we need to improve in order to embrace the future of the profession.

Law and Robots

Fastcase CEO Ed Walters gave a talk entitled “The Law of Robots: Changing Law for Thinking Machines.” It’s exactly what it sounds like—Ed explored how to deal with robots using the law and other legal implications of artificial intelligence. The talk was incredibly popular.

The Importance of Retaining Talent

Jules Miller of Evolve Law spoke about the human resources side of the legal industry. Specifically, she focused on what law practices can learn from Silicon Valley.

“Hiring isn’t over when an employee starts,” she said, driving home the importance of retaining top talent and building a positive culture.

Kimberley Motley

Finally, the day closed with a keynote speech from Kimberley Motley. Motley is the first and only foreign litigator working in Afghanistan, and she believes in using laws as they’re intended to be used. Her talk moved and inspired many in the audience. See her 2014 TED talk here.

Other speakers from day one of the Clio Cloud Conference included:

• Clio’s own Eric Bin and Ryan Sydor, who shared some of their favorite Clio Integrations. These included Quickbooks, Xero, Dropbox, and Zapier.
• David Leary, who spoke about what lawyers can learn from accountants and their journey to the cloud.
• Anthony Marrone, who spoke about running law firms like small businesses.

There’s plenty more happening on day two, so be sure to check back!

Want to hear more about the Clio Cloud Conference this year? Check out #ClioCloud9 on Twitter.

We published this blog post in September 2016. Last updated: February 3, 2023.

Categorized in: Business, Clio, Technology