Robert Ambrogi Blog
In his nearly 90-minute keynote at ClioCon last Thursday, CEO Jack Newton laid out an ambitious array of new products that, together, form what he called the Intelligent Legal Work Platform, transforming Clio from a “system of record” to a “system of action.”
Toward the end of that talk, he presented a “day in the life” of a lawyer at a firm powered by this new platform.
“I want to show you end to end what the day in a life of a Clio leveraging law firm looks like, one where AIs are quietly running in the background, making their day simpler, faster and more impactful,” he said.
What follows is a summary of the day he described.
Starting the Day
At 9 a.m., the lawyer reviews an AI-powered briefing instead of parsing through her inbox. While the lawyer slept, Clio “worked overnight,” extracting deadlines from court orders, sending tasks to her paralegal and updating her calendar.
In a not-so-subtle dig at the recent rebranding of Clio competitor 8am, Newton said of his fictional lawyer, “Because AI worked overnight, I can skip 8am and get my day started at 9.”
Morning Messages
As the lawyer answers client emails and jumps on a morning call, AI silently captures every minute. Call durations and notes are logged automatically to the correct matters. Reconciling time is no longer part of the lawyer’s day.
A New Client
A new client inquiry comes through the lawyer’s website. AI handles it end-to-end – screening for the firm’s client criteria, conflict checking across Clio Manage and Clio Grow, and scheduling the consult. By the time the lawyer sees it, all the pre-consult work is done, all without having to play phone tag or wasting time on people the firm cannot help. By the time the lawyer joins the consult, she gets a summary with all the intake details.
After the consult, a quick voice command sends an engagement letter, requests the client’s e-signature and posts a follow-up. The matter is moving forward before the lawyer has even closed the tab.
Preparing A Motion
Later, the lawyer uploads a 40-page motion into Clio. Within minutes, the lawyer gets a clean summary of all the relevant precedents and even profiles of opposing counsel and the judge via Clio Work. It pulls citations, surfacing the key authorities the lawyer needs. “Research that once took hours is ready before my coffee’s even cooled,” as Newton put it.
While the lawyer is at lunch, her paralegal uses Clio Draft to autofill parties, captions and exhibits directly from Clio. Documents are generated accurately from templates with no double entry.
Due Diligence Review
After lunch, the lawyer sees that an opposing party has sent documents for due diligence, but there are thousands of them to review. Not a problem – the lawyer can upload them and extract key terms and summaries within minutes, rather than days.
Using Found Time
With the time the lawyer has saved, she works on a pending litigation matter. She asks Clio to prepare the motion to dismiss and AI generates the drafts, assembles exhibits and routes it for review.
Getting Paid
Instead of inputting expenses, the lawyer uses Clio’s mobile app to snap a picture of receipts. AI automatically creates the entry and adds it to the right matter.
Meanwhile, AI has already generated her month-end invoices. It cleaned up her notes and got every approval she needed. Clients pay instantly thanks to the convenience of e-payments. Some pay by text-to-pay while others pay through auto-generated payment plans. And soon, with Clio’s new Pay Later, clients will have the flexibility to finance payments, while the lawyer still gets paid in full up front.
Court Calendaring
An email arrives with a new court order. Clio tags it to the matter, updates the stage, and sets a review deadline. From her filing dashboard, the lawyer can see every active submission across the firm.
Custom Reports
The lawyer asks Clio to show her all unbilled time from the last quarter and it delivers a customer report in seconds, all without needing exports or spreadsheets.
End-of-Day Briefing
At the close of the day, the lawyer switches to Clio’s new dark mode and reads her AI generated day-end briefing of progress made, invoices sent, payments that came in, and filings that are on track. It even suggests calendar adjustments for the next week.
With time in her day still left, the lawyer does the one thing AI can’t do for her – and that’s going for an evening run.
Believe It When You See It
Newton summed up:
“For those that thought AI in legal was all hype, or said, ‘I’ll believe it when I’ll see it,’ well, this is it, you’re seeing it. While so much of what I’ve described would have sounded like science fiction even a year or two ago, Clio has already built everything I just walked through … . It’s all code that is shipping today.”