Clio on r/legaltech
Clio's AMA on r/legaltech. Every question and answer below is verbatim from the live Reddit thread. Chapters are ordered by community upvotes on Clio's reply.
01 I watched your keynote presentation from ClioCon and saw you mention a new feature that uses AI to build templates/precedents ↑4
Asked by u/coolegaltechgeek · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
I watched your keynote presentation from ClioCon and saw you mention a new feature that uses AI to build templates/precedents. Can you share any more information or a demo/video of this in practice? If this works well, it's a gamechanger for precedent building and use.
What you saw in my ClioCon Keynote was Draft AI, which eliminates the need to manually create document templates. Instead of manually creating document templates, you can start with reference documents you already trust and convert them into reusable document templates. Draft AI also uses AI to automatically generate client questionnaires based on those templates. Clients fill them out online, and their responses populate directly back into your documents, so you’re not copying and pasting or fixing the same mistakes over and over. You can learn more about this functionality here - https://www.clio.com/draft/templates-service/
02 At what point does a legal platform become a decision-maker rather than a tool, and is that a line you want to cross ↑2
Asked by u/BadDense2323 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
At what point does a legal platform become a decision-maker rather than a tool, and is that a line you want to cross?
In a legal AI context I think it's crucial that the legal professional be the "decision-maker" for any key decisions. John, our Chief Product Officer, talks about "Jesus take the wheel" VS "God is my co-pilot" tasks. Marketing decisions might be "Jesus takes the wheel" while Drafting is certainly "God is my co-pilot." We think about our AI capabilities as "assistants" that can help enable better and faster decision-making, but at the end of the day the lawyer has to be accountable and responsible for the key decisions in a case. As we evolve from a System of Record to a System of Action, it's important to ensure legal professionals are "in the loop" on all key decisions — AI should automate as much as possible, and in some cases make decisions on low-stakes or "two-way-door" types of decisions. Thinking about where that dividing line is something we spend a lot of time on.
03 Can we get more customization with task types and stages ↑2
Asked by u/LiquidSquidMan69 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Can we get more customization with task types and stages? Along with scheduled reminders to clients concerning outstanding items/tasks?
We track, for example, documents needed for clients as a task. Automatic follow ups would be great.
Also, it is totally unacceptable that an appointment with automatic reminders made via Grow does not automatically associate with the matter in Manage.
We're always investing in making tasks better, and Matter Stages is a relatively new feature we're continuing to iterate on. I'll pass on your feedback to our Product team!
Thank you good sir. Big ups to you for doing this.
04 I left clio when your support was sent overseas, the supports horrible and why you charge in usd if your a proud Canadian ↑0
Asked by u/Live_Situation7913 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
I left clio when your support was sent overseas, the supports horrible and why you charge in usd if your a proud Canadian?
Our support is not overseas. It is regularly rated as one of the top support organizations in all of SaaS, and we charge our Canadian customers in CAD.
05 Why is Clio Grow so outdated, and are there improvements in the works ↑3
Asked by u/2016throwaway0318 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Why is Clio Grow so outdated, and are there improvements in the works?
We've been investing a lot in Grow over the past couple of years — just in the last six months we've released e-mail marketing tools, multi-attribution tools, and new conflict checking capabilities. We've just started piloting our Grow AI product that enable huge amounts of the intake process to be automated.
I'd be curious to hear what you'd like to see in Grow as we're continuing to increase our investment in making this the best Legal CRM on the market.
Main thing Grow needs is to feel like one coherent intake engine instead of a bunch of separate screens. Right now, it’s clunky to go from web form → consult → retainer → follow-up in a predictable, repeatable way. I’d love: 1) templateable intake “playbooks” by practice area (PI, crim, family, imm) with fields, emails, and tasks bundled; 2) better two-way texting baked in (automated reminders, canned replies, image uploads); 3) cleaner reporting on conversion by source, staff, and stage without needing exports. Also, the handoff between Grow and Clio Manage still feels awkward; automations across the two should be more “if X then Y” without Zapier. I’ve bounced between Lawmatics and HubSpot, and lately been testing Pulse alongside them for Reddit lead gen, and the firms that win are the ones with that smooth, end-to-end workflow. Main ask: make Grow that smooth, opinionated path.
Main thing Grow needs is to feel like one coherent intake engine instead of a bunch of separate screens. Right now, it’s clunky to go from web form → consult → retainer → follow-up in a predictable, repeatable way. I’d love: 1) templateable intake “playbooks” by practice area (PI, crim, family, imm) with fields, emails, and tasks bundled; 2) better two-way texting baked in (automated reminders, canned replies, image uploads); 3) cleaner reporting on conversion by source, staff, and stage without needing exports. Also, the handoff between Grow and Clio Manage still feels awkward; automations across the two should be more “if X then Y” without Zapier. I’ve bounced between Lawmatics and HubSpot, and lately been testing Pulse alongside them for Reddit lead gen, and the firms that win are the ones with that smooth, end-to-end workflow. Main ask: make Grow that smooth, opinionated path.
It’s still not as good as the product they bought to re-skin as grow.
Well, to be fair it IS the product we bought and evolved into Grow — what do you feel is missing from that product, or has Clio Grow regressed in some way relative to what you want to see from it?
06 How do you prevent vLex (Vincent) from becoming a great standalone research product instead of the core of Clio’s workflow ↑3
Asked by u/Intelligent_Staff995 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
How do you prevent vLex (Vincent) from becoming a great standalone research product instead of the core of Clio’s workflow? What data advantage does that integration give you that Westlaw, Lexis, or general‑purpose AI platforms cannot realistically replicate?
I think we've shown really clearly via Clio Work how we see Vincent becoming deeply integrated into your workflows and your data in a way that's much more powerful than just a standalone research product. While Vincent is a powerful legal research platform, it's so much more than that when coupled with the right kind of context.
I'd encourage you to check out my ClioCon keynote starting at about 39:00 to hear my vision of how the power of context and the grounding in legal data: https://youtu.be/1sHIhZq0EOY?t=2364
07 Any plans for A.I ↑2
Asked by u/themistermeister · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Any plans for A.I. time tracking natively built into Clio?
It is easily one of my favorite and most reliable uses of A.I. so far. And having Clio run it alongside Clio Drive, calendar, etc. seems like a slam dunk.
This is one we’re really excited about, and we announced plans for our AI Timekeeper at ClioCon.
The idea is to capture work as it naturally happens throughout your day, including documents you’re working on, emails and calls, and calendar activity, without timers or having to piece things together at the end of the day.
That activity turns into matter-matched time entries you can quickly review and approve, so billing is more accurate and a lot less painful. The goal is to let the work you’re already doing turn into billable time, while you stay focused on clients instead of the clock.
We’re working on this now and plan to launch in 2026, and we think it’s going to meaningfully change how timekeeping feels day to day.
08 Would you consider partnering in the next few years with OpenAI, Anthropic or another model maker to provide your legal data from Vlex (eg case law, dockets, etc.) to improve their frontier model ↑1
Asked by u/ShallotOwn8432 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Would you consider partnering in the next few years with OpenAI, Anthropic or another model maker to provide your legal data from Vlex (eg case law, dockets, etc.) to improve their frontier model?
I could absolutely see a strategic partnership of some kind with one of the foundational models being something we'd explore over the coming years.
Can I ask as a follow up if (1) you are currently pursuing any strategic partnerships with them (or expect to have one in time) and (2) whether any strategic partnership would involve using Vlex data to actually train a model?
I can't comment on that I'm afraid!
09 It's always felt frustrating to me that there are only a few firms who operate as end to end legal research platforms, and it must've felt great to acquire vLex ↑1
Asked by u/TBP-LETFs · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
It's always felt frustrating to me that there are only a few firms who operate as end to end legal research platforms, and it must've felt great to acquire vLex.
Do you think we will see any open source projects (like RECAP for PACER records) ever reach the scale and breadth of the for-profit research platforms like vLex? If not, why not? Is it just an issue of cost?
Was a big part of the vLex acquisition using that data for proprietary AI training/RAG/refinement?
The rationale for acquiring vLex was really grounded in the breadth and depth of the content database they've built — over 1B documents of primary case law, legislation, statutes and secondary materials spanning 110 countries.
Open-source projects like RECAP are hugely important, but getting to the scale and depth of something like vLex isn’t just about raw data or cost. It’s the ongoing editorial work, normalization across jurisdictions, citations, translations, updates, etc. That’s hard to sustain without a commercial model, even though open source plays a critical role alongside it.
The level of investment required to build these kinds of curated, QA'd datasets is enormous — vLex has been at it for 25 years, TR and LN for even longer. Open source approaches will address portions of the market, but I suspect they'll never have the comprehensiveness of the commercial solutions.
10 Thanks for being here u/JackNewtonClioCEO ↑1
Asked by u/Hungry-Bob-3802 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Thanks for being here u/JackNewtonClioCEO! In your book, you argue there's a $3 trillion latent legal market and that client-centered efficiency is how firms unlock it. How do you reconcile the client-centered thesis with a business model that punishes efficiency?
As someone building tools to increase litigation efficiency, the math works against me: a reviewer bills 8 hours to summarize a production set. With AI, that becomes 1 hour. I've just vaporized 7 hours of billable revenue.
The optimist in me says: value-based pricing is increasingly common in practice areas like PI and med mal, so efficiency flows to margin. If firms can deliver reviews faster, they win more work with clients - the latent market absorbs the freed-up capacity. But I'm not sure I believe it yet for the broader legal market.
Do you think the billable hour is the real blocker, or is there a path forward I'm not seeing?
Shameless plug: what does a Canadian legal tech founder need to do to get you to advise them?
I really think the billable hour is the structural constraint here. The industry needs to move to value-based billing, and the efficiencies AI drives are just fundamentally incompatible with the billable hour model. Firms that want to tap into that $3T latent legal market need to reimagine how they are pricing and packaging their services, and the market has shown they are hungry for alternatives to the classical law firm + billable hour structure.
I'm always happy to give advice to other legaltech founds, drop me a DM if you have follow-up questions!
11 Hey there, can you share any more info on Clio Library ↑1
Asked by u/gopokes307 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hey there, can you share any more info on Clio Library? I don’t understand it. Is this going to be more like a westlaw/lexis replacement or something else entirely? What is the target price point for a small firm?
Yes, Clio Library is essentially the vLex Library, which is the library of over 1B documents. Clio Library is being sold as part of the Clio Work bundle for small firms, which is priced at $199/user/month.
12 Why not allow people on annual plans to try new product offerings on a monthly basis ↑6
Asked by u/harmless-error · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Why not allow people on annual plans to try new product offerings on a monthly basis?
I beta tested Duo and it was not even remotely good. I should be able to try the AI offering now without having to commit $600 to it for a year.
A lot of this just comes down to constraints with the "Clio Billing Service" (CBS) that our products leverage to bill/invoice our customers. We are constantly adding new capabilities to CBS, and allowing for the kinds of trials you're hoping to see is one of the new capabilities we've built out recently. Look for a lot more flexibility to try out new products on a trial basis in 2026.
You’re a tech company in the year of our Lord 2025. If you can’t manage this, then why am I trusting you to process my client payments or my trust accounting?
It’s not a matter of capability but a matter of priority.
I generally dont chime in on things like this ... but ive got to wonder whether this answer to a bunch of lawyers was really the best choice.
The answer to "why cant we have monthly billing instead of yearly billing" is essentially "it's difficult to bill monthly instead of yearly..."
I think "it was a business choice ... we are re-thinking it" is probably more honest and transparent. A tech company saying billing is hard loses credibility IMO.
Billing is actually incredibly hard and complex. Talk to any scaled company about combinatorial explosion of complexity that comes with a multiproduct suite with monthly / annual and other billing terms.
There are billion dollar+ companies like Zuora and Chargebee and ALL they do is provide tools to do billing to SaaS companies like Clio.
If it was a simple business choice, trust I would have said so.
13 When an AI-assisted action goes wrong, where should accountability sit in a platform like yours ↑2
Asked by u/BadDense2323 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
When an AI-assisted action goes wrong, where should accountability sit in a platform like yours?
This kind of ties in to your other question about decision-making in AI (https://www.reddit.com/r/legaltech/comments/1pq2f52/comment/nur3ot8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). In the legal context, accountability for the work product being delivered ultimately lies with the lawyer. Whether they're using AI or other human beings, the lawyer needs to supervise that work and ensure it delivers on the right level of quality.
14 Why does Clio make it so easy to subscribe and difficult to cancel ↑2
Asked by u/2016throwaway0318 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Why does Clio make it so easy to subscribe and difficult to cancel?
It shouldn’t feel hard to cancel, full stop. We offer both month-to-month and annual plans, and either way the process of cancelling under those plans should be clear and straightforward. I want firms to stay with Clio because it’s delivering real value, not because it’s hard to leave. If you’ve run into issues cancelling or downgrading, please DM me and happy to help out.
Clio is not difficult to cancel at all if you are on month to month.
15 Please add “Mark as Unread” to internal communications on Clio Manage ↑2
Asked by u/I_was_xj11 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Please add “Mark as Unread” to internal communications on Clio Manage! It’s only available on IOS and would be deeply helpful on a web browser version.
Great suggestion — I will pass on to the Product team!
16 Bro, add a tier with decent reporting without all of the litigation crap tied into the package ↑2
Asked by u/Mail_Order_Lutefisk · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Bro, add a tier with decent reporting without all of the litigation crap tied into the package. It’s patently ridiculous to charge for litigation focused features just to get reporting. I consider it a micro aggression against transactional lawyers to have the bundles that you guys have. I want to give you more money but not 4x and here I am looking at Practice Panther because of the farcical reporting in the base tier. Y’all’s lit-centric focus is gonna cost you broad swaths of the small firm market if you’re not careful. Otherwise your product is stellar but it’s so infuriating trying to do quarter or year end reporting with the base tier that I’m leery of subjecting myself to suffer through it again.
Thanks for the feedback. I will pass this onto our Marketing team that handles pricing and packaging. We are not intentionally gating Reporting behind litigation-related features, but trying to break the packages into logical tiers without making them overly complex with dozens of ad-hoc add-ons.
17 Harvey’s partnership with Aderant puts an AI layer directly into the finance and practice systems Big Law already runs on ↑1
Asked by u/Intelligent_Staff995 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Harvey’s partnership with Aderant puts an AI layer directly into the finance and practice systems Big Law already runs on. How, if at all, has that changed your plans for using ShareDo as Clio’s entry point into BigLaw?
ShareDo (now Clio Operate) is and always has been an integral part of our Enterprise strategy. Much as we've brought the Business of Law and Practice of Law together in the SMB segment with Clio Work, we see Clio Operate + Vincent as being a hugely powerful combination in the Enterprise. ShareDo / Clio Operate already has deep integrations with Aderant, Elite, iManage and a wide variety of other enterprise software solutions, essentially providing an abstraction layer over all the data that a law firm might want to make available to Vincent to power all of its capabilities.
18 Hi Jack, First, thank you ↑1
Asked by u/SilencedObserver · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Jack,
First, thank you.
Three questions, pick one or more:
1. What steps is Clio taking to prepare for the growth positioned by the latest acquisition? 2. Does any of Clio's AI tech rely on any of the big subscriber models, or if the vLex acquisition include a completely in-house-built set of capabilities that won't succumb to changes by the big players? 3. How does what Clio's AI offerings do differ from the problems that legal professionals are facing in courtrooms with AI generated content? Not having used your platform before, I'm genuinely curious how these issues are tackled.
Thank you for your engagement with the internet, and for your time.
Let me answer #1 and #3!
On your first question, we're going through a major evolution of our organization to support both the ShareDo and vLex acquisition. We've launched a whole new division, Clio for Enterprise, to support our Enterprise ambitions, and are investing deeply in AI to support everyone from solos to 1,000+ lawyer firms. We are hiring over 500 roles to support this expansion (check out our Careers page if you're looking to join #teamclio!)
On your third question about legal professionals running into issues with AI: the vast majority of these problems can be tied back to lawyers using generic, general-purposes AI models that are not grounded in legal data. As a result, these models hallucinate, and we've seen lawyers be censured (or worse) for filing documents with the court that contain this hallucinated data. Our foundational thesis around acquiring vLex was that legal AI needs to be grounded in the underlying law, and needs to be able to transparently generate citations that can be verified by legal professionals.
19 Any plans to incorporate scheduler in Manage ↑1
Asked by u/2016throwaway0318 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Any plans to incorporate scheduler in Manage?
Yes, this is very much something we’re thinking about. Our focus is on unifying communications across Clio Grow and Clio Manage in 2026 so the client experience feels consistent from intake through active matters. We’re not ready to announce specifics yet, but the goal is to make these experiences feel connected and cohesive rather than split across products. I can't wait to have the power of Scheduler available in Manage!
20 Thoughts on IPO in 2026 ↑1
Asked by u/jayT1212 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Thoughts on IPO in 2026?
We'll be focused on integrating vLex and ShareDo in 2026.
21 Will you do anything with big law firms ↑1
Asked by u/Substantial-One3856 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Will you do anything with big law firms?
Yes! We've launched Clio for Enterprise and are bringing Clio Operate (formally ShareDo) and Vincent into the Enterprise, and are hiring 300+ people to support that expansion effort over the next year. You can see more detail about our plans for the Enterprise in my ClioCon 2025 Keynote on YouTube. We're hugely excited about the opportunity there.
22 I tried to run a report for all open matters, looking for contact name and address to send Christmas cards ↑1
Asked by u/LiquidSquidMan69 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
I tried to run a report for all open matters, looking for contact name and address to send Christmas cards.
Clio Manage was unable to pull matters with an open date more than two years ago.
This shouldn't be a problem. I should be able to easily extract this information into a Excel sheet, but there doesn't seem to be an easy method of doing this.
That sounds like a bug — I will flag with our team.
23 As an aspiring Entrepreneur and wanting to venture into Legal Tech as a Startup ↑1
Asked by u/Ok_Mathematician4485 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
As an aspiring Entrepreneur and wanting to venture into Legal Tech as a Startup. Having difficulty right now to gain trust from firms.
With that being said, how did you get your first few clients?
We ran an open, free beta and got a handful of deeply engaged early pilot customers in that beta. We listened to them carefully, iterated rapidly, and launched the commercial product 6 months after that beta. We followed the Stephen Blank "Customer Development" methodology and it worked great for us.
24 Why does Clio Drive sort by contact, rather than matter ↑1
Asked by u/bettingcats · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Why does Clio Drive sort by contact, rather than matter? That makes us virtually unusable since ANY contact gets its own file. The rest of Clio can sort by matter, so why not drive?
Clio Drive is being relaunched (native rewrite) and I will see if this feedback can get incorporated into the updated version. Thanks for the feedback!
25 Hi Jack ↑1
Asked by u/Fun_Chipmunk4345 · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Jack! I'd love to talk automations - I feel like that is generally where the rubber will hit the road in legal tech, especially those who use Clio Grow. With a limited IT bench, small law firms will find it hard to automate anything in Clio Grow without API/webhook knowledge or the skills to maintain a secure connection to 3rd party integrations. Many small firms rely on the security of Clio with their data. Is there any work in the direction of more customizable automations within Clio Grow? I'd love to see it! Thanks! Katie Stokes AI Specialist - Munson Law Firm
Yes, we're building our automation platform to be more extensible and flexible, and see this as an even bigger imperative in the AI era — automations will be fundamental to the AI orchestration layer in Clio.
26 Is your team ever going to take the time to modernize the Clio Manage UI ↑0
Asked by u/pogg · Clio AMA · 18 Dec 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Is your team ever going to take the time to modernize the Clio Manage UI? There are so many silly and easily fixable shortcomings, for e.g.: matters/contacts/etc can be displayed in a table with custom fields as columns, but you can’t sort by those columns, even when they are quantitative data types such as dates; it is not possible to manually reorder tasks, and many other types of data; related contacts on matter dashboards cannot be reordered at all and will only display in the order created; matters can have only one contact as the “Client” when we all know that lots of types of legal matters involve joint representation of multiple clients; interacting with tasks and docs require numerous clicks through 1990s-era menus when competing generic tools have modern UI improvements like click-and-drag to move a file into a folder (so simple!); there are no keyboard shortcuts for efficient use of your web browser based software application; you can sync files into Clio Docs from an individual user account’s OneDrive but not from SharePoint. I could go on. For some reason, your team recently spent time and effort building in the ability to send plain text only emails from inside Clio Manage. Who asked for that? Using Clio Manage in 2025 is like taking a time machine back to 2005. You’re spending a lot of money acquiring other companies. How do you balance that with investing in keeping your “flagship” product from becoming so outdated?
Appreciate the critique, and know that we're working on modernizing the UI constantly. We have a major rework of the Manage UI — called Boldly — that is underway. I will make sure to pass on your feedback to our Product team.