Making it in the Big City with Clio

Daniel Gershburg, Gershburg Law P.C.

Daniel Gershburg is a solo attorney at Gershburg Law P.C. which deals with transactional real estate and bankruptcy matters in the heart of New York City. As a lawyer working in a competitive metropolitan market, he knows that he needs to be his best to earn new clients—while keeping the ones he has happy.

But when dealing with more than 30 clients at a time, each with their own paperwork, negotiations, escrow accounts, and billing records to keep straight, he needs a practice management system that helps him track of every detail without slowing him down. Clio allows him to work an additional 5 to 8 files every month, and helps bring in an additional 20% in revenue.

This is how he does it with Clio.

Creating less to worry about

With an efficient system in place, Daniel brings clients on 60% faster—and he doesn’t need to worry about making sure his case information is up to date, it’s all taken care of for him as the case progresses.

“I hate having to do a bunch of small, repetitive tasks, especially when they’re redundant to each other,” says Daniel, who’s set up a series of efficient integrations between the most important software at his firm.

With Clio as the central hub for storing all of his case, contact, and billing information, he’s able to connect his practice management software to other services—either directly or through integration partner Zapier.

“When a client comes in, I send them a retainer via email from Clio Grow. Embedded in the email is a link that lets them pay instantly online via credit card. Once they’ve paid, all of that information gets exported into a new matter that gets created automatically in Clio,” says Daniel.

“Once the bill has run,” he says, “a folder is also created in Dropbox with the matter name, which the retainer agreement gets saved to. At the same time, a card gets placed immediately on my Trello board, so I know exactly what’s going on, and a checklist of tasks is created for that specific client.”

To save time on client communications, and to make himself more available to clients, he uses Clio’s client portal to ensure that they have on-demand access, at any time, to all files and information he’s shared with them.

Confidence and peace of mind in managing client trust accounts

“In the state of New York, when dealing with trust account money, if you sign the wrong amount, you will lose your licence,” says Daniel, who as a real estate attorney, deals heavily with escrow accounts.

“We use TrustBooks in conjunction with Clio to to reconcile all of these accounts, and I cannot explain the level of comfort that gives me,” says Daniel. “One of the things attorneys panic about most, hands down, are escrow accounts. I use Clio very often when it comes to reconciling trust accounts.”

“TrustBooks is a really practical complement to Clio, and it helps us ensure that every account gets zeroed out,” he says.

Staying on top everything, and planning what’s next

With Clio, Daniel knows at any given time where a case is at.

“I might be closing 30 real estate deals at a time,” says Daniel. “I can go to the Billing page in Clio and see that someone hasn’t paid in 32 days. I can immediately look into what’s happening with the case. Clio helps me keep on top of things, even though there are so many things going on at one time.”

Even simple time savings can be huge. “Instead of writing a bill, saving it, emailing, and then making sure it’s received, you just create a Quick Bill in Clio, send it out, and it’s done,” says Daniel. “Maybe it saves you 5 or 10 minutes, but you do that for 20 clients a month over 12 months a year, and it saves a lot more.”

Clio is also a big part of how Daniel plans out the future of his firm. “I use Clio to make snapshots of what I brought in that month and that year,” he says. “I look at the numbers based on practice area, how many times we represented a seller, how many times we represented a purchaser, and then I can project what the next month’s, or the next year’s, numbers are going to look like.”

When things get hectic, simple matters

“Clio just works, it works well, it’s simple, it works with everything, and it looks nice,” says Daniel, who knows that saving time and avoiding headaches is its own reward.

“Maybe I get more work done, maybe I get time to myself, or maybe I just make sure I get out of the office by 6 o’clock,” he says. “I care about the time savings, but sometimes it’s important to make things simpler—not because it adds any reward or gives us the ability to do something during the day—just for the sake of making things simpler.”