How Clio Benefits Everyone at a 100-Person Law Firm

Brian King, Managing Partner
“Before Clio, it took us hours of time to be able to get the data that we needed to be able to run an effective law practice. Afterwards, it became instantaneous—that’s what Clio is for us; instantaneous management, instantaneous case work, and instantaneous client responsiveness.

We had a server-based system before. It was terrible, and we constantly had to upgrade hardware and then software and then hardware and then software. We were playing a game we just couldn’t keep up with … And once we jumped on Clio, I never once said, ‘Boy, I wish we were in the other program.’ Nobody ever said that. We went from having downtime every week, sometimes multiple times a day, to almost never with Clio.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager
“With Clio, we can get everything from a tablet, from our cell phone, or essentially anywhere that there’s an internet connection. I don’t have to worry if the King Law server is down, or if there is a problem with this program and I can’t get to certain documents. Those were all frequent problems we had (with our old software).

With Clio, I can take my laptop and I can go work from anywhere. With our system before, we simply did not have that capability. Now, I utilize the Clio Mobile App on a daily basis … If I’ve got my cell phone, I can go on and record my time. I can update my calendar. I can communicate with clients or third-party vendors or whoever it may be. I can do that all from a cell phone, with 18 locations.”

Cindy Andrews, Financial Director
“Before Clio, we just sent out a bill to everybody that had a balance every week, and that made billing so time consuming. But Clio is quicker. Not only in the fact that I can do current billing in four hours—everything I need to do, including my trust pull—but also because our Financial Controller can automate the outstanding invoices to clients. It has definitely sped up our tasks, and I think, yes, Clio has made a difference in our revenue.”

Brian King, Managing Partner

“Clio saves us an incredible amount of time. I would say our billing immediately jumped up 20%, just purely on the fact that Clio’s Time Tracking enabled us to enter time immediately … It goes straight to the time entry, right to the client, for a savings of time and a 20% increase in revenue.

Every Thursday we bill 5,000 clients and bring in over $300,000 per week.

Clio also allowed us to greatly reduce our hardware costs. I could change all of our computers tomorrow, and we wouldn’t skip a beat with Clio.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager

“Our attorney staff has doubled since going to Clio, and our revenue has increased. It’s definitely much easier to train attorneys and folks are up to speed quicker, and therefore they’re billing much quicker. The revenue comes in much more quickly, and billing is more efficient.”

Leslie Wall, Financial Controller
“Conducting Clio billing saves us time. Our old system took two days and multiple software programs. With Clio, we are able to conduct billing from one program and it has cut our time billing down to half a day.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager
“Switching to Clio was worth it! Anytime you make a change, there are going to be some hard decisions that have to be made. But in the end, once we got through the trenches and the technical things, migrating the data over—we brought over 40,000 client matters and contact information … That all takes time, it’s very technical—but once it was done, it was fantastic … Knowing now what I didn’t know then, I wish we would have done it before, because it has been a game-changer for our firm.”

John Crotts, Partner
“We used another practice management software for approximately 20 years before finally switching to Clio. Our biggest regret was that we did not make the change sooner. The transition will be tedious, but Clio tech support will be available to assist every step of the way. Investing in Clio will transform your practice and take it to the next level.”

Brian King, Managing Partner
“A data migration was a huge part of our process. When we went to Clio in 2019, we had to take 40,000 files and all of the documents into Clio. It was an incredible amount of work. Clio was with us every step of the way. We had IT on staff to help work that out. We had 16 years of work that we brought over—I think it was something like 150,000 contacts. It was not small, it was a long time, and we did it in batches.

As a firm, you’re going to want to think about Clio, but you’re going to say, ‘It’s too hard, it’s too big of an issue.’ What we did was we made a decision and we got Clio in July, and I made an announcement to everybody that we’re going live on January 1st (of the next year). So we had a six-month timeframe that we put into it. I said, ‘Guess what: On January 2nd, your old files are not going to be available. You are going to have to use Clio. I don’t care if you are old, young, new, new to us, or have been here forever—this is what we’re going to do.’ So we set up a training program and we did it in groups. I’m not going to say that it was completely painless—I’m sure there were some issues—but I will tell you it was so smooth.”

Brian King, Managing Partner
“Every day I’ve got a dashboard, and with one screen I can know exactly how much money we have, how much money is outstanding, and what kind of bills are out there. I can see what the hours are of each one of our attorneys, what they’re working on, who might be struggling out there, who’s good at retaining clients, and what the percentage of retaining clients is. I immediately will know what’s going on in terms of their collection rates—they may be billing well, but are they actually collecting money? Before we had Clio, these things were in multiple programs—if I could get them at all. Now it’s one step every morning, and I’m able to manage the firm.

Clio really does allow me to be a true CEO of the firm, and to have that data right at my fingertips. You don’t get that from any other practice management software.”

John Crotts, Partner
“Clio contains the veins and arteries of our law firm. Our motto to our team is that ‘if it’s not in Clio, it didn’t happen.’ Documents are saved, tasks are assigned, communications are completed both internally and externally, deadlines are tracked, billing efficiency is improved, vital reports are generated, firm statistics are maintained, and more.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager
“As General Manager, there are a lot of things that I oversee—from human resources, to facilities, to marketing technology—and in order to keep organized, be efficient, and be where I need to be, I have to use Clio. Everything that I do is in Clio. Clio is the only program that I typically use on a day-to-day basis here at the firm.”

Barbara Henry, Senior Associate
“Clio allows me to be successful in my role by ensuring that assignments are never forgotten. In my career field, it is important that assignments for each file never fall behind. As a result, I appreciate the ability to see when tasks that I assign on each Clio file have been completed.”

Gabriella Morillo, Associate Attorney
“Clio helps me stay organized and track my time accurately. I love the Clio sharing option … to share important documents with my clients. Clio is very user friendly, so although I did have to learn how to navigate the software at first, I caught on quickly, and I find it easy to teach others how to use Clio as well.”

Cindy Andrews, Financial Director
“Well, I’m the Financial Director, and I handle the Clio Payments as far as monitoring those and making sure they’re linked. I do the billing—for the firm we do weekly billing, and I do all the final accounting for the trust account. And then of course I’ll help anybody that needs assistance with the accounting in the firm whenever needed. Overall, Clio has made my job easier than before. It has definitely sped up the billing process for me. Clio has a lot of features that are beneficial to billing. Sending out emails, and emailing bills and printing bills—Clio has made things very easy in that respect. And it has saved us time overall.”

Leslie Wall, Financial Controller
“With Clio, it is easy to see your client’s trust balance, work in progress, and outstanding balance. You can easily track client expenses as well.”

Delton Barnes, Junior Partner
“My three favorite things about Clio are the Dashboard, the Reports, and the Document search feature. Clio allows my team to be even more successful because of its real-time number tracking. First, Clio makes tracking time extremely simple. If it is easy to track time, it is easy to bill. Second, Clio’s Dashboard and Reports make identifying how attainable certain goals are completely instant. The ability to see numbers in real time means making immediate adjustments as necessary to meet our goals.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager
“For me personally, I use the features within Clio every day. I’m using the calendar, I’m using the documents, I’m using activities. Even though I am in a non-billable position, we ask our staff to track everything they do that is work-related. That allows us to see, number one, what’s happening within all 20 of our offices. It helps us to document the progress on client cases, and it also helps us in the decision-making process when we want to scale the business.”

Barbara Henry, Senior Associate
“The ability to assign tasks and ensure their completion makes Clio most valuable for me.”

Gabriella Morillo, Associate Attorney
“It’s modern! I love how easy it is to stay in communication with other people in the firm. My husband uses a legal software that is a lot older and harder to use. Clio gives a fresh database of the entire firm and stays up to date with what is happening in the legal world.”

Cindy Andrews, Financial Director
“I love the Clio Payments credit card processing feature. Before, in our other accounting software, when somebody was to make a credit card payment, they may have gone onto our website and made a payment, or it would come to my email. I’d then have to turn around and then apply that payment—it was totally manual. Or, they would have to call in, and somebody would take the payment. Whereas now, they’re able to either go directly to their invoice and pay their invoice, or several invoices all at once. That time savings is excellent.”

Brian King, Managing Partner
“Clio is something completely different for each part of our firm. Marketing uses Clio for the statistical models on where our clients are coming from. For client intake, it is contacts, it is quick, it is attorneys’ calendars and shifting to make sure all 15 of our locations—it’s air traffic control for them. For case managers, it’s templates, lists, and paper filing: All of that is connected.For attorneys, it’s templates, how to practice law. It’s making sure that our clients are taken care of, that court arguments are clearly set up in documents when they’re on the go or in the courtroom. For our accounting team, it’s a completely different program. For them, it’s a billing collection program.Clio is a cube that comes to you, and each person is looking at a completely different side, but all that data is the same. What one person does immediately impacts all the other parts. I think that’s incredible for what it means to us.Since we have attorneys that are literally four hours apart in terms of day work that we’re working on the same cases, we had to have a solution that allows everybody to be tied together. Clio does all of that, and it does it in a very simplistic and easy-to-learn way that really tied our attorneys to our staff, to our accounting department, to our client intake group—everything was able to be put on the same page, and now we practice wherever we are. Our attorneys now have a full-flex schedule—they work from home, they work from the courthouse, they work from wherever they are. Clio makes that possible. We couldn’t do it without Clio.”

John Crotts, Partner
“When our policies are followed by our team and Clio is utilized to its fullest potential, we run laps around our competition. We were early adopters of using technology to maximize efficiencies at our office. Clio allows us to remain at the forefront of technological advances in the practice of law.”

Kimberly Mullinax, General Manager
“With our intake team, our intake schedules for all 60 attorneys and all 20 locations, we’re able to see each other’s calendars. So if I’ve got a client calling—whether it’s a new client or a prospective client or an existing client—it helps me identify where the attorney is, where their case manager is, and who is going to be the first person that can handle this call. Because our goal here at King Law is to give same-day service and reply to everything on the same day or within 24 business hours. So having that calendar transparency in our staff, keeping their calendars updated, allows us to better serve our clients. And then once the potential client has become a client, the case manager is doing their case manager meeting, and they’re filling out any needed information into the customized fields. They’re drafting skeleton documents, whether that be a complaint or a demand letter or an opinion letter, and then scheduling a time for the client to meet with the attorney to finalize documents before filing.”

Brian King, Managing Partner
“If you’re out there and you’re thinking about a change, there are a lot of different reasons. You may be frustrated or you may be looking for that change, and you’re probably trying to come up with solutions, because the old brick-and-mortar office solution is no longer there and the recruits that are coming in want to have something that they can practice law in their hands, on their phone, in their back pocket.

Clio offers all of that for you, but it is also a group of people that are going to be backing you up. Instead of talking to salespeople, you’re going to be talking to people partners. You’re going to be talking to the very people that you’ll hopefully be able to see at the Clio Cloud Conference and maybe even at a law firm near you. But it’s a relationship that you want to build, because if you’re a lawyer in the 2020s, you’ve got to be thinking about what technology is going to be, what you’ll want your firm to look like in 10 years. You’ve got to make a decision of who you’re going to bet on.

I don’t have any doubt that Clio is going to look radically different from what it looks like now in 10 years—but I know I’m going to have it. I’ll have all the access to that, and I’m going to grow with the programs, and my team and I are going to understand what’s going on with the firm.

I think that’s what I would say is more important than anything else—whatever expenditure money it’s going to be, you’re not going to beat the pricing that Clio has. But, to whatever extent you’re concerned about that pricing, you tell me: What other investment are you going to make for your firm that’s going to make the kind of difference that Clio is going to make for you?

If you get Clio and you implement Clio, (the Clio team) will be there with you to help you through that process. You will immediately net what you used to gross. That’s going to happen immediately. Clio turned us from a $4-million firm to an $8-million firm in two years.

You’re not going to lose time anymore, you’re not going to lose productivity, you’re not going to lose a client that you never thought was there … The amount of money that you’re going to spend on Clio, you will instantly gain. I can say that confidently: Whether you’re a small firm or a large firm or you’re like us—somewhere in an in-between stage—you’re going to see that kind of difference.”