In this video Lynda Artesani of Artesani Accounting introduces legal practice management software Clio as a technology option for law firms that already use QuickBooks. She explains why integrating Clio with QuickBooks is essential to avoid duplicate data entry and manual errors, and recommends that accountants become Clio‑certified. Artesani walks through Clio’s main capabilities—case management, document storage, billing and trust accounting, calendaring, task assignment, online payments (Clio Payments powered by LawPay), and the two product lines Clio Grow (client acquisition) and Clio Manage (day‑to‑day firm operations). She contrasts these features with LeanLaw, noting that LeanLaw offers stronger, more granular reporting while Clio’s reporting is basic unless add‑on tools are purchased. She highlights Clio’s long market presence since 2007, its annual conference (October in Tennessee) where the Clio Trends Report is released, and its pricing model (higher per‑user cost but includes more functionality and cloud storage). The video serves as a high‑level overview, promising deeper walkthroughs of Clio’s interface in upcoming June videos.
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Hi there. Lynda Artesani, Artesani Accounting. So we're shifting gears this week and we're going to start to talk about some legal tech and legal tech options for attorneys and people who work at law firms and what would be the best technology to add to QuickBooks. So we always consider QuickBooks as a base. Actually just completed 2 global webinars for Intuit on cloud-based technology and also Moving to the Cloud, How Do You Train Your Team, which I'll put some dates in the article so you know when those webinars are. And talking about technology itself and what is the best technology for a law firm. And this week, believe it or not, we're going to talk about Clio. So I'm sure you were all expecting me to talk about LeanLaw because that's my number one hands-down favorite tool to use when working with QuickBooks. But at our firm, we also use Clio. And Clio is different than LeanLaw in a few ways. When clients come to us, sometimes they'll look, they'll see that we're a Clio-certified firm. So if you're an accountant or bookkeeper, we recommend getting certified in the software, the technology, so you know how to use the product. We just met with the folks at Clio yesterday and talking about the different nuances that we see, and we see a lot of times when firms come to us that are using Clio, they actually Have Clio not as a— they use it as a standalone. They actually don't connect it to the accounting software, which is something that we recommend that you do. We think that it's important to connect the software. First of all, it's gonna save you time. Why would you wanna do it on one side and then have to replicate the data on another? And when you start to do manual processes like that, that's going to require you to maybe make a mistake. And the whole point of using the software is to A, automate your workflow and to B, integrate that into QuickBooks So you get the data, you get the data from the client side, client perspective, client side of all the transactions out of Clio and the trust accounting especially. And then on the QuickBooks side, you're seeing the whole picture. So connecting the software is important and we'll get into that in a few videos. I'm going to dedicate June and the videos for June into talking about Clio. Clio is different than LeanLaw because it has many other features. So it's a case management software. Meaning that you can follow the case throughout the whole— through the whole cycle from the minute it comes through the door, the phone call, you know, all the paperwork. You can connect the files in there. Any communication with your client will all be housed under that client. So it's a big benefit when you're working with a client with Clio. Document management. So you're going to be able to load the documents in for the case or matter and put them right inside that one place that's housed for the client inside of Clio. You store them there. So you're not having to store them in another place and then You're keeping the data in all one place, which makes everything really easy. It's billing software. So you're gonna be able to do your billing through Clio, very similar to LeanLaw. And what's nice about that is you can have, if you have a properly running law firm and the attorney's not doing all the work, there's a legal assistant or a paralegal working on the file, maybe multiple attorneys, you're all able to log in and see it. And what I like about Clio is it has that timeline. So you can see the progression of the case. Say it's a divorce matter, you're gonna see the progression of when all the things need to be filed and you can follow it. So when you have a lot of people working in one file, you're able to follow the length of that, that case or matter inside the program. You can see where you're at in the program. There's calendaring. So you can have those important dates that you don't want to miss inside the calendar inside of Clio. Task management. You can assign tasks to people. Maybe you have a task that the paralegal should be handling because they don't charge as much, still billable time, but you're able to charge Have the paralegal do the work, keep the cost down for the client. Happy client, always important. Referrals, you want to get more referrals. The ability to make online payments is there as well. It's called Clio Payments. And Clio Payments is, is run by LawPay, but it's a specific payment method inside of Clio. And that's also there as well. I've seen some issues with that, but it's not exactly perfect. So Clio is the software that's been around the longest. I mentioned yesterday to them that it's the grandfather of all the legal tech. It's been around since 2007. So that's not an insult, that's actually a compliment. So it's been around a very long time before a lot of these other software, and it's got a lot of bells and whistles to it. If you log into Clio, you're going to see that there's an option to do Clio Grow, which is more focused on strategizing your firm growth, as well as Clio Manage, which is the one we always work in where the billing, the trust accounting, everything is in. Now, there's a few things about Clio that are a little bit weaker than LeanLaw. Reports, for certain. You have to buy add-on programs to be able to get more robust reporting. Their reporting is very basic, but I know that they're trying to improve that as well to make the product a little bit better. LeanLaw, hands down, is far ahead of where Clio is, but they're catching up. They're working on some really cool things that I think you're going to see down the pipeline. The folks over there, all the people that we've met that work there, kind of like the people I've met at Intuit, All wonderful people. They're very dedicated and they're working towards that common goal. Clio also has a conference. So if you want to learn more about the product, come to the conference. That's in October. I'm going, Sarah's going, and we're going to be there. And it's in Tennessee, so it's my time zone. Yay! But we'll also be there to— you'll be there to learn about the technology. That's when they drop the Clio Trends Report so you can see how you're doing as opposed to other law firms. That's another piece of it. Clio's not that expensive. It's more expensive than LeanLaw is per user, but you get a lot more working parts. You have to pay for that storage in the cloud and all of that. And having that ability to have those timelines inside there. Obviously, Clio manages a little bit more and you can bundle them and get a pretty good deal on that. And then you get some good reporting and you get some good benchmarks and things like that. I think that's probably it on Clio, the overview outline of Clio. We'll dive in next week into the software and I'll walk you through some of the features So you get a, you know, bird's-eye view of what's in there, and then we can deeper dive into some of the other sections. So on that, I hope you enjoyed this little short overview, and we will see you all in the next video. Bye now!
