Highlights from the 2019 Clio Cloud Conference

The 2019 Clio Cloud Conference was without a doubt our biggest and best event yet. As a conference with a reputation for “consistently [being] one of the best for legal professionals interested in learning how to better manage their practices and use technology,” according to Bob Ambrogi, there’s a high bar—and the Clio team does an exceptional job of meeting (and exceeding) that expectation every year.

This year’s conference centered around thriving—ensuring lawyers and law firms have what they need to not just survive but flourish in a competitive, experience-driven world. To that end, the conference featured insightful and educational talks, access to data-driven insights from the 2019 Legal Trends Report, and as always, plenty of exciting announcements from Clio.

Read on for a high-level recap of our 2019 conference. 

Jack Newton’s Opening Keynote

Jack kicked off the conference with a powerful opening keynote covering this year’s historic $250 million investment in Clio from TCV and JMI Equity, the largest growth stage investment both in the legal technology industry and in Canadian history. He spoke about how the investment will allow Clio to accelerate its vision of building the operating system for legal—a goal which he believes is important for the legal industry as a whole to meet its full potential.

Jack also spoke about new features and updates to Clio Manage and Clio Grow, the concept of the Law Firm Maturity Model, highlights from the 2019 Legal Trends Report, and his first book, The Client-Centered Law Firm—a timely rallying call for the legal industry, and a practical guide to becoming a firm that both delivers effortless client experiences and is efficient and profitable.

The book is available for preorder now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book retailers, and will be released in 2020. Preorder before October 28 and enter our preorder contest for your chance to win our Grand Prize, including a new iPad® and noise canceling headphones!

New to Clio

We were excited to highlight a number of recent additions to Clio Grow and Clio Manage to help legal professionals grow efficient, profitable firms. Our big product updates include a rebuilt and redesigned mobile app, and a few early access features available exclusively to 2019 Clio Cloud Conference attendees—our new Clio Scheduler, to streamline appointment bookings for clients and firms in Clio Grow, and the new Firm Dashboard in Clio Manage.

Other recent additions to Clio include non-billable time tracking, to give lawyers better insight into the time, effort, and cost that goes into each case, and the new Outstanding Balances feature (located within the main Billing tab of Clio Manage) to make outstanding balances across multiple invoices easier to manage for firms and easier to see and pay for clients. Read more about these features in the highlights of Jack’s opening keynote.

Read more about these features in highlights from Jack Newton’s Keynote.

The 2019 Legal Trends Report: On lawyer responsiveness

The 2019 Clio Cloud Conference marked the release of the fourth annual Legal Trends Report. For the first time, with the benefit of past years’ data, we significantly expanded its scope to look at multi-year trends and analyze what makes the difference between shrinking and growing firms. 

In addition, the report covered an in-depth analysis into how people find their lawyers, including what they look for and what their process is like. One of the main findings was that lawyers need to drastically improve their responsiveness to new clients: 79% of consumers expect a response within 24 hours, but 60% of firms that were emailed as part of research for the report did not respond at all. The full report is available now, for more insight into these findings.

Download the 2019 Legal Trends Report.

Celebrating our incredible Clio customers at the 2019 Reisman Awards

Every year, we’re honored to celebrate the incredibly inspiring work of our Clio Customers. This year, we’re proud to announce our 2019 Reisman Award Winners, with the addition of a new category: Excellence in Client Service.

• Best New Law Firm: Vanst Law
• Best Growth Story: Hamra Law Group
• Community Champion: Beacon Law
• Legal Innovation: Levine Family Law Group
• Excellence in Client Service: Cascade Legal Planning

Watch their stories here.

$100,000 Launch//Code Contest Winner: Casetext

Our $100,000 Launch//Code contest was once again an inspiring look at the innovation taking place within the legal industry, with standout presentations from five finalists, chosen from over 60 submissions:

• Casetext, a smarter legal research platform. 
• Community.lawyer, which allows firms to build custom client intakes and document automations in minutes.
• firmTRAK, a data analytics reporting tool that seamlessly integrates with Clio.
• Heymarket, which provides easy and trackable business text messaging with your firm’s Clio contacts.
• WiseTime, which passively captures your activity while you work and collates it in a private timeline.

It was a difficult choice, but our panel of judges chose Casetext! Congratulations to Casetext for winning the $100,000 prize, and becoming a strong integration for Clio customers. 

Learn more about these partners and others in the Clio App Directory.

Inspiring keynote speakers

This year’s Clio Cloud Conference keynotes shared insightful, motivating presentations that reminded legal professionals of their importance and their power to make a difference in our society. 

Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink is one of the best-selling nonfiction authors of the last decade. His books on work, business, and behavior—including When and Drive—have won multiple awards, been translated into 39 languages, and have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.

Among other things, Daniel spoke at the Clio Cloud Conference about how lawyers can leverage the secrets of good timing to get more out of their day—a critical insight for a profession that regularly involves long hours and demanding work.

Shaka Senghor & Deanna Van Buren

Shaka Senghor​ is the President and Creative Director of Shaka Senghor, Inc. His memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison, debuted on The New York Times and The Washington Post Best Seller Lists.

Deanna Van Buren is the Design Director and Co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), an architecture and real estate development non-profit. DJDS aims to end mass incarceration by building infrastructure that attacks its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself.

Both keynotes gave moving back-to-back talks highlighting areas for improvement in the justice system from different perspectives. It was a privilege to watch them present and hear about their work.

Glenn Greenwald

As a former constitutional lawyer, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, and the author of several bestsellers, Glenn Greenwald was certainly a keynote to watch at this year’s conference. In 2013, Greenwald led the Guardian reporting that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service, and his work was featured in the 2014 film Citizenfour, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. He has won numerous awards for his NSA work, including the 2013 Polk Award for national security reporting.

At the conference, Glenn spoke about the importance of privacy and security, and the critical role that lawyers have in upholding these rights. It was a powerful presentation that reminded many in the audience why they chose to work in this industry.

Valuable educational sessions

In addition to our incredible keynotes, a number of other legal industry leaders took the 2019 Clio Cloud Conference stage to give thought-provoking educational talks. Each gave conference attendees practical insights to take back and set in motion at their firms. Here are a few highlights:

• A primer for lawyers on businesspeople. Mark Britton, legal industry expert and Clio board member, shared tips for lawyers based on his expertise as founder and former CEO of Avvo, an online marketplace for legal services, that was purchased by Internet Brands in 2018.
• How to be a tech-enabled super admin. Lori Gonzales, President of the The RayNa Corporation, shared advice for paralegals and administrative assistants on using tech to practice law more efficiently.
• Building a unique law firm. Shreya Ley, co-founder at LayRoots, spoke about the importance of positioning and differentiation for law firms.
• Changing the future of law. Erin Levine, CEO of Hello Divorce & Levine Family Law, talked about how she pivoted from a law firm to an online legal services platform. As the market changes, so should lawyers. 

Additions designed to help lawyers thrive

As always, the Clio Cloud Conference was far from just a legal conference. The event featured plenty of wellness opportunities to help attendees unwind, and meaningful additions to make the event live up to its reputation as a whole-person conference. From our Industry Event at the Prado in historic Balboa Park to our Iconic San Diego Beach House Bash, this year’s event included a number of lively, thoughtful, and enjoyable additions that made it one for the books. Other highlights included:

• Live on-site silk screening for an attendee choice of t-shirts and totes
• Sunrise yoga, a fitness bootcamp, and a morning walk or jog
• Conference tours to help first-time attendees get the most out of their experience
• Free coaching sessions offered by five experienced coaches
• Free headshots sponsored by Martindale-Avvo

We published this blog post in October 2019. Last updated: May 14, 2021.

Categorized in: Clio