JD Durkin: Jack Newton, CEO of Clio, the all-in-one software platform for lawyers and law firms. Jack, good to see you here today. Grateful for a few minutes of your time. For anyone who might be a bit unfamiliar with what Clio is all about, what is it, and what are some of your top priorities here this year?
Jack Newton: Well, Clio is a legal AI platform, and we serve virtually all of the legal market, from solos and small firms to mid-market firms to enterprise firms, including the AmLaw 200 and large in-house counsel teams. And we allow those businesses and law firms to operationalize their platforms through Clio Manage and Clio Operate. And we allow them to supercharge their workflows with AI capabilities that are really profoundly transforming how lawyers at firms of all sizes, as well as in-house counsel teams, get their legal work done.
JD Durkin: Jack, you unveiled a new brand and a new platform at ClioCon. First of all, what is ClioCon, and what do these new announcements reflect about where the company really is today?
Jack Newton: Well, Clio has gone through a pretty incredible evolution over the course of the last year. And ClioCon, by the way, is our annual conference. It’s grown to over 10,000 people attending this year. We’re in Boston, launching all of our new products and capabilities, and hosting customers and prospects, as well as a variety of thought leaders in the industry, to see what’s going on with Clio and what’s new.
At ClioCon last year, we announced a huge acquisition, a $1 billion acquisition of a company named vLex. And what vLex brought to Clio was an incredible platform of legal data, as well as legal AI, that we were able to unify with our business-of-law platform, our operating system for legal. And over the course of the last year, we’ve built an entirely new category of software that we describe as the intelligent legal work platform.
And for lawyers that want to run their practices, run their law firms or in-house counsel teams, in a modern way, they can leverage Clio’s capabilities through this intelligent legal work platform and get legal work done in an entirely new way, leveraging the very strongest capabilities that AI has to offer today. So that is the transformation we’ve gone through over the course of the last year, unveiling and deploying this intelligent legal work platform to law firms and in-house counsel teams of all sizes. The response has been incredibly positive. And what we unveiled yesterday at ClioCon was an entirely new brand identity that reflects this evolution into the world’s first intelligent legal work platform.
JD Durkin: That sounds awesome. I’ve got to admit, I’ve got a little bit of FOMO, not having been there. I’ve got less than a minute left. Law, you know better than anyone, demands accountability, and it demands trust. Where does legal artificial intelligence go from here?
Jack Newton: Well, I think something that is really resonating with our customers, and the legal market more broadly, in terms of how we’re positioning Clio’s approach, is that we see legal AI as dramatically amplifying and accelerating what lawyers are able to do. But what that doesn’t change is that lawyers are ultimately accountable and responsible for the legal work product they’re producing for their clients.
So while we’re deploying an incredible array of capabilities into Clio, we’re ensuring that the human is in charge, that the lawyer’s ultimately in charge of those workflows. And while the agents inside of Clio, inside of this intelligent legal work platform, can orchestrate huge amounts of work, draft pleadings, and produce recommendations for the lawyer, we allow the lawyers to stay in charge, supervising that work, leveraging the agents in a really powerful way, but ensuring that they can represent their clients and that they are ultimately accountable and responsible for the work product they’re producing. That is something that is exceptionally powerful about our approach at Clio, and something that is really resonating with our customers.
JD Durkin: Jack Newton, CEO of Clio. Congratulations on ClioCon and all the exciting announcements. Thanks for stopping by the show today.
Jack Newton: Thanks for having me.
