Here’s a list of those tools, with links, so that you can learn more about how they help you prevent and mitigate disasters in your firm.

Voice of IP Phone Systems:

• Skype;
• Vonnage;
• Magic Jack

Call Forwarding:

• GoogleVoice

Virtual Receptionist Service (mentioned by guest speaker, Joe Bahgat):

• Call Ruby

Cloud Based Email Services:

• Google Apps, which syncs with Clio;
• Microsoft Office 365

Social Media Services for Communicating with Dislocated Clients:

• Facebook;
• Twitter;
• LinkedIn;
• Google+

Backup:

• Box.net, which syncs with Clio; 
• Dropbox, which syncs with Clio;
• Netdocuments, which syncs with Clio;
• Carbonite;
• CrashPlan;
• Mozy

Practice Management Services:

• Clio

Document Management:

• Netdocuments;
• Google Apps, which syncs with Clio;
• Microsoft Office 365

We hope you enjoyed our presentation and that these tools help you meet the challenges that can come with disruption of your business.

Mid-December of last year I attended my first Clio Town Hall during which the founders gave us an overview of the past month and talked about Clio’s core values. My favorite one almost immediately: “always act in Clio’s best interest” which struck me as being a fantastic tool to empower and motivate the team to raise the bar.

I ran a small web studio for five years, doing pretty much everything myself, from business development to coding and everything in between. I had to apply this principle on a daily basis. There was nobody else to deliver the project, I had to act in my company’s best interest at all times: getting great work done.

I still experience this everyday at Clio by working with a team committed to craft some fantastic features to create a great user experience. We’re getting great work done to make legal practice management a breeze.

As a User Experience Designer, I research trends, users needs, features, interface improvements, etc. and quite often my work can’t be easily quantified using traditional methods. In fact, it can take up to a few days to get a user flow or page information architecture right.

The same way it can take a few extra days to write the code that will not only make the feature usable, but which will also make it fit into our users’ daily workflow.

The adage says that smaller companies are often more reactive than larger ones and I’ve seen many start ups wasting time and energy by picking up too many battles. Clio is focused, moving fast and doing things right: fostering a culture for a talented team who cares about its users.

What else could a UX designer could hope for?

The event will take place at Jack Astor’s Front Street (address below) and will be hosted by Catherine Hillier and Joshua Tanzola from the Clio team. Drop by and enjoy complimentary food, drinks and fantastic conversations with the Clio crew and other Clio users and fans.

Please feel free to bring friends and colleagues! We recommend that you RSVP now, as space is limited.

Clio will be also be exhibiting at the LSUC Solo and Small Firm Conference taking placeMay 23 and 24; if you’re attending please drop by and visit us at the Clio booth!

Where
Jack Astor’s (Front Street)
144 Front St. West
Toronto, ON M5J 2L7
Map 

When
Thursday, May 23
4:30 PM – 6:30PM 
Please RSVP by clicking here.

If you are a lawyer that has been impacted by the recent storms, Clio is here to help.

For both new and existing users, we are offering 60 days of free service to help deal with recovery, and have a special startup offer for users moving their practices to Clio and “the Cloud” as a result of this disaster.

We know that these are difficult times for both lawyers and their clients affected by this disaster.  Effective local, legal assistance can really help families.

Getting your law firm up and running quickly is our priority, so that your clients can be your first priority.

Please e-mail disaster.assistance@goclio.com for more information.

The first annual Clio Cloud Conference features talks from legal industry thought leaders, in-depth training on Clio and the cloud, and promises to teach lawyers how to take their practices to “Cloud 9”

Clio, the most widely used cloud-based legal practice management platform announced its inaugural Clio Cloud Conference, to be held September 23 and 24 in Chicago, IL. The two-day event will feature legal industry thought leaders speaking on the evolving relationship between law and technology, while also showcasing the latest developments in Clio and innovative technologies for the legal industry. 

“We are committed to helping our customers take their law practices to ‘Cloud 9’, and this conference is an important part of delivering on that promise.”

“We’re thrilled to be hosting the inaugural Clio Cloud Conference, and even more excited to be defining a new class of legal conference that delivers compelling content from industry thought leaders, the Clio team, our partners, and our customers,“ states Jack Newton, Clio’s founder and CEO. “We are committed to helping our customers take their law practices to ‘Cloud 9’, and this conference is an important part of delivering on that promise.”

The 2013 Clio Cloud Conference promises to be an engaging and interactive affair comprising of sessions providing key insights into the state of the legal market and the adoption of new technologies, as well as giving attendees practical hands-on training on Clio’s existing features as well as exciting new features that will be released at the event. The conference will also feature exhibits from Clio’s partners, including NetDocuments, Fujitsu, Fastcase, Ruby Receptionists, and Xero. 

One of the focal points of the event, however, will be an “Unconference” format that will run in parallel with other conference sessions. The “Unconference” format is a new and trending concept in the events industry that will give attendees a hands-on, interactive venue to engage with fellow Clio users as well as with Clio’s support and product teams.

The conference’s speakers features a list of who’s who in the legal industry and include:

• Jack Newton, Clio’s co-founder and CEO
• Robert Ambrogi, lawyer, journalist, media consultant, and author of the LawSites blog
• Andy Daws, Vice President North America – Riverview Law
• Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of Fastcase
• Chad Burton, founding attorney of Burton Law, a virtual law firm
• Doug Edmonds, Assistant Dean for IT at UNC School of Law
• Matt Homann, Founder of LexThink
• Joshua Lenon, Clio’s Director of Communications and Outreach
• Gwynne Monahan, Clio’s Communications Manager and Editor of Small Firm Innovation

To learn more about the 2013 Clio Cloud Conference, visit www.cliocloudconference.com or follow on Twitter using the hashtag #ClioCloud9.

Our Director of Communications, Joshua Lenon, is speaking today at the Vermont Solo and Small Firm Conference on how to Build Your Own Virtual Law Firm.  (You can watch a previous recording of this talk.)

Be sure to stop by and say hello!

Moving from Los Angeles to Austin makes a good case for wanting to use a cloud-based practice management platform, but Kleinpeter had an eye-opening experience during a two-and-a-half year employment lawsuit. As she explained it, “counsel asked for my hours, and I realized I had to get the data from three different systems and put it all together. And, oh boy! It took days to get that all together. And it was very embarrassing. One attorney thought I was making my billable hours up while the other attorney believed me but I don’t think he fully understood why it could take so long – but I had changed systems so many times to find one that worked, so my data was in many locations and multiple formats.” No lawyer wants to be embarrassed about accounting for his or her time, so when asked if Clio helped keep better track of her time and billing, Kleinpeter agreed. Clio makes her bills “look really professional and pretty, and I think that scares [defense counsel] as they have a hard time arguing that I should not have spent so much time. We can work it out instead of going to the fee settling round. In the end you have to make your bills look good to get a higher amount paid, and that’s what Clio does.”

Good-looking bills is certainly a benefit of using Clio, but we’re also curious to know what led lawyers to pick Clio over other options. The answer often has to do with how helpful and responsive our Support team is, or the fact that Clio is a cloud-based platform that integrates with other services like Google Apps, Dropbox and Box. For Kleinpeter, “Clio was a way to get around that ‘Oh we have a Mac version but it’s older’ or ‘We don’t have a Mac version’ excuses I heard from other companies.” Joining a growing trend, she was also influenced by another technologist: her husband.  “Clio is built on Ruby and my husband is a big Ruby guy and so I was like ‘OK I’ll try that.’ I’m around people who think highly of Ruby so that was an influence.”

Ruby on Rails is an open source framework, which is another legal trend as tech-savvy small firm lawyers look to cut costs while not giving up much function.  Lawyers are choosing open source software like OpenOffice or LibreOffice over Microsoft Word, or building law firm websites using the free software, WordPress.

Though she uses a Mac in her office, Kleinpeter has an Android smartphone. Clio and Google sync and allow her to have all her contacts easily accessible from her phone. “So if I’m on my way to meet a client somewhere, and am running late, I can call. And in this day and age, people expect you to keep them informed. Those little things really make stressful days much easier.” Little things that help lawyers deliver good customer service.

Read the full interview here: 

Tell us a little about your firm, location, practice area, etc?

I am the only full time employee of Hill Country Consumer Law, and by consumer law I mean consumer financial issues such as debt collection, harassment debt collection or people are just sued on a debt and I defend them. I help with credit report problems, and my largest practice area is auto fraud, from lemon law to warranty issues to financing to misrepresentations in the purchase.

How did you decide on auto fraud?

Just based on the competition since moving from Los Angeles to Austin. There’s not a lot of other people doing auto fraud in my area. When I started in Austin, and people found out that’s what I did, they send me cases.

What did you use before Clio?

Directly before Clio, I’d given up on electronic case management and was using paper. I made these little worksheets, and a lot of things were half filled in. They’d say things like “Draft, review, attend” and I’d circle one so I knew what needed to be done. I went back to paper, old school, because everything I used didn’t work.

I had an employment lawsuit that went on for two and a half years, and after trial they were still trying to settle. Counsel asked for my hours, and I realized I had to get the data from three different systems and put it all together. I had some in Practice Master, which I quit and did a data dump that was in some weird format, a format that was foreign to me so I had to sort that out. There was another Software I don’t remember, and then paper. And, oh boy! It took days to get that all together. And it was very embarrassing. One attorney thought I was making my billable hours up while the other attorney believed me but I don’t think he fully understood why it could take so long – but I had changed systems so many times to find one that worked, so my data was in many locations and multiple formats.

It was hard to find something I’ll actually use on a daily basis. I had to find a system that made it as easy as possible so I was more compelled to do the less fun, but also important work of being a lawyer – keeping track of the details on a minute-by-minute basis.

What made you decide on Clio? Did you try out any other solutions?

I was interested in having a system in the cloud for portability. I was working from home but also kept a part time office. At the time, I didn’t have a lot of cases, and didn’t work a consistent 9-5 work day after the birth of my daughter so I wanted something with flexibility. I also work on a Mac, and one of the systems I was using required me to run Parallels, and it was really slow. That slowed down the whole computer, and sometimes Parallels would crash, my practice software would stop, and I would be too busy to bring it back up.

Clio was a way to get around that “Oh we have a Mac version but it’s older” or “We don’t have a Mac version” excuses I heard from other companies.  Also, Clio is built on Ruby and my husband is a big Ruby guy and so I was like “OK I’ll try that.” I’m around people who think highly of Ruby so that was an influence.

What problems did Clio help your firm solve?

Clio helped me organize the cases, especially by client. At that time, I was still doing a lot of bankruptcies. Some would file bankruptcy but others ended up having multiple consumer cases. Right around the time of the economic downturn, many clients didn’t want to file until foreclosure or when a short sales had finished a short sale so there were multiple issues I was dealing with per client.

With Clio, all the client’s cases are accessible and together. I can keep track of the hours per case and per client. My billing is the same as employment law.  The statutes I use shift attorney fees to the Defendant, so my fees are not paid by my client, but by whomever we sue.  Whether I settle or go to trial, I to have to give my hours to the court or to the opposing attorney and have them approve.  The court often decides how much I get paid, so it’s very important that I keep very careful track of my time, and that my billing looks as professional as possible.

Defense counsel usually expects a consumer attorney to provide a general bill, giving an estimate of hours that they can argue with.  Instead, I send a detailed bill with some redactions. It looks really professional and pretty, and I think that scares them as they have a tougher time arguing that I should have not spent so much.  We can work it out instead of going to the fee settling round. In the end you have to make your bills look good to get a higher amount paid, and that’s what Clio does.

I’m also really glad Clio integrates with Google Calendar and I integrate with Dropbox so my files are all stored in Dropbox but linked to Clio so I can pull them up by client pretty well. So if Joe S has a similar case to Jane D, I can look and see what was filed in that that case, how far it went and that’s really helpful.

One thing I have just started is using Clio immediately from the first client call and during the intake process.  Before, I had a contract paralegal do my intake and write out all the information, but I’d have to later type it into Clio. Now I am setting up procedures where from the minute we first get a prospective client’s name and contact information, that goes into Clio.  

Now, I can link a new pending case to a new client really quickly and start a matter and start my billing earlier and that is really good.  From the first phone call, I’m ready. If I talk with the client for 10 or 12 minutes, well that’s .2 of an hour. Client sends documents, I look them over before we meet and I can record that. There’s a matter already created so it’s easy to bill.

What did you find to be Clio’s most valuable feature?

It’s easy to create a new matter and start billing on it immediately. And within a minute or two I can see the total owed on the case. A lot of my cases settle early, and having fast access to the billable time and costs is nice. If I settle case right away, the defendants come back and say, “You didn’t even file a lawsuit, this took you two hours?” so having it written down bit by bit means I can show that yes, it takes six or seven hours to go from initial gathering of information to the settlement discussion.  

What benefits have you realized from Clio that you didn’t anticipate?

The contact information has been incredibly useful because I have an Android phone, and it syncs with Google. I have everyone’s information on my phone, so if I’m on my way to meet a client somewhere, and am running late, I can call. And in this day and age, people expect you to keep them informed.  Those little things really make stressful days much easier.

Have Clio & “the Cloud” changed the way you practice law? If so, how?

So many things happened at the same time that I first got Clio, so this is hard to answer.   I first got Clio when I was in California, around the time my daughter was born, there were so many changes to my practice. But then biggest challenge was when my family moved to Texas, but I kept my California practice open. That was made infinitely more possible by having Clio. Everything I needed, for the most part, was in the cloud. I did have to ship some boxes contain exhibits back and forth for trial, but everything else was in Clio.

By having Clio I was able to keep abreast of things, bounce things off to an associate in California when needed and still keep track of cases. I knew right away what was going on in each case and nothing got dropped.

How did you find the process of getting up and running with Clio?

I don’t remember anything traumatic, which is good. At the time, I had only a few cases, so it wasn’t hard to put that information into Clio. I didn’t transfer everything over. I just started with contacts for flat fee cases and only input all data for the hourly cases. Now I do flat fees in Clio, too and it’s much easier. Everything is integrated, flat fee and hourly are all together.

Debt counseling is a different hourly rate, and with Clio it’s easy to customize for a specific client, or for a specific case. So I can do debt counseling for someone, and also file a phone harassment case for the same client, but customize the rates as easy as pie.

How has Clio improved your firm and the service you offer your clients?

It is always a challenge getting up to speed on a topic when a client or opposing counsel calls. It can take a minute or two, but Clio lets me quickly see what’s coming up. What I mean is that when I’m working, my head is in one place, then people call and it changes my focus. Clio lets me know what I’m talking about faster, as I keep it up on my second monitor at all times, and get easily find a matter.

I can find information from home, too, which is definitely a benefit. My son gets off the bus at 3:55 in the afternoon. I leave the office at 3:40 everyday, and that means I do some things at home. If I take some calls there, I can just open the laptop and grab the data while I’m chatting. With Clio, it doesn’t take long to get up to speed even if I’m not in the office when people expect me to be.

Have you had any experiences with Clio’s support team?

Yes. Several. One that really sealed the deal, and made me very happy with Clio, was the way they changed the procedure for saving a billing entry. I emailed Support about my problem (I kept hitting next instead of save), but I was thinking “yeah right, what are they going to do?” To my surprise, Support changed the color of the buttons – making one a link and one a “button” and that totally worked! Made me actually save my time instead of erasing it and I was like “wow they changed it for me!”

Not only did they make the change, they were polite about it. I was working with one of those online booking software places, it quit working, and the support person said not many people used the feature so it would be a while. The difference between the support I got at Clio and the booking software support was huge.

I’m not necessarily loyal to things that aren’t working. I’m attracted to things that are new and shiny.  I am always thinking, “What could be better, what would fix my life perfectly?” I’ve been using Clio for at least four years, and that’s amazing for me. That means it’s working for me.

Would you recommend Clio to your colleagues?

I do, and I have.

Mac or PC?

Mac person with #android phone and an #android tablet.

This week, we are in Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington DC.

In Louisiana, our Director of Communications Joshua Lenon, and George Psiharis, our Director of Business Development and Partnerships, will both be speaking about cloud computing and ethics in several towns throughout Louisiana during the week.

Joshua Lenon is also be speaking at the Vermont Solo and Small Firm Conference on how to Build Your Own Virtual Law Firm.  (You can watch a previous recording of this talk.)

Here is where you can find more information about each show:

• Louisiana CLEs
• New Jersey State Bar Association’s Annual Meeting and Convention
• Oregon Technology Forum, CLE and Vendor Fair
• Suffolk Law’s Accelerate Your Marketing: Super Marketing Conference III
• Vermont Solo & Small Firm Conference
• National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives Annual Conference

Letisha Luecking Orlet
Letisha Luecking Orlet, P.C.
Nashville, IL

Christopher G. Hill
The Law Office of Christopher G. Hill, P.C.
Glen Allen, VA

Moira Dickinson
The Dickinson Law Offices
Houston, TX

#ClioRewards: Letisha Luecking Orlet

I’m always happy to talk to people about how great Clio is working for me!!

Tell us a bit about your firm. 

I am a solo practitioner and have been in business for about a year now. Most of my practice consists of divorce and custody cases; however, I also handle wills, contracts, and real estate work. This is my second career, having spent ten years in finance as my first. My last semester of law school I took a class on law firm management and during that class I gave a presentation on which case management firms were available. That is not the first I learned about Clio, but that is when I really started to research Clio and begin testing it.

What is your favorite aspect of using Clio? 

Clio is truly a wonderful management program and I am so happy with it. I started my practice using it, so there was no transition for me. Recently, I began concentrating on automation of documents. I have automated all of my divorce documents and cut my doc preparation time down to a fourth of the time it used to take me. I’m so excited by this! I’m going to continue working on some of my other documents and get those automated as well.

I also love the billing feature. I’ve recently spent some time learning the different features available for billing and cut my preparation time there as well! Overall, Clio is a wonderful product! When I need tech support, I’m answered right away. The developers are open to suggestions and implement them. Clio has everything I need in one place and truly makes my life so much easier! I can’t imagine using anything else and I recommend it to everyone I know! Thanks for such a great product!!

#ClioRewards: Christopher G. Hill

Tell us a bit about your firm.

The Law Office of Christopher G. Hill, PC is a solo (meaning me) firm with no other employees. I am a Virginia construction attorney, LEED AP and Virginia Supreme Court Certified General District Court Mediator. My main focus is the representation of contractors, subcontractors and material men in the construction industry.

What is your favorite aspect of using Clio?

The portability and cloud based access. This allows me, as a solo practitioner, to keep up with things even on those days I can’t be in the office.

Read Chris Hill’s #GoneClio interview.

#ClioRewards: Moira Dickinson

Tell us a bit about your firm.

We are a boutique IP firm located in Houston, Texas. We primarily file patents for oil or gas drilling tools, but also serve as a kind of “general practitioner” for our clients. I work with two other full-time attorneys, my father and younger brother, as well as our lovely support staff and “Of Counsel” attorneys.

What is your favorite aspect of using Clio? 

I love the ease of accessibility of Clio, both the site itself and the people who run the company. 

What is the first app you installed on your new iPad?!

The first app I installed was Pandora, got to have those tunes!

 Read Moira Dickinson’s #GoneClio interview.

Refer your colleagues now!

I say, “almost” because there was one little issue that came up for me. It was such a small issue, but it was like a paper cut: tiny and superficial and unbelievably annoying. The problem was this: if you used custom matter numbering, and you included the month the matter was opened in the number, the first nine months only consisted of 1 digit, while the last three months consisted of 2 digits. The problem with this is that January looks a lot like October and when you’re filing, October, November and December would come before February.

I called Clio to point out the problem, but I got off the phone feeling like there was little chance that this would ever be addressed. It’s understandable; I’m sure they have a lot of other work to do, and this was such a small issue. I tried to just deal with it.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t adjust to the inconsistency in the matter numbering, so I started looking for their competitors. Clio support noticed this, and reached out to me. A Customer Support Manager called me within minutes, and she told me that she would address the problem. In approximately 24 hours, my issue was fixed. I was sort of shocked. Who does that? I would never expect a company to actually update their software because I really, really want all months to consist of two digits.

So, while I was temporarily frustrated with Clio, I am once again amazed by how responsive and helpful the company is. They really go above and beyond. I’m very happy to be a Clio customer.