Clio is web-based legal practice management software for solo practitioners and small firms. It is designed to replace multiple different systems (like document management, case management, and accounting software) to streamline the amount of technology that small firms need to manage.
$49
per user/per month
Intapp Time
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Intapp in Palo Alto offers Intapp Time, a legal billing application focusing on managing alternate fee structures and rich information for analysis and optimization.
Clio is a wonderful practice management solution for small firms that do billable work. The Clio manage software is excellent for tracking your time at different rates, tracking matter budgets, and tracking expenses. Clio is also great for firms that want to implement and use tech in their offices. If clients are at least somewhat tech-savvy (have and know how to use email), they will also benefit and enjoy the implementation of Clio.
Time recording and time entry are such a massive and universal pain point for all timekeepers. All timekeepers perform this task on an almost daily basis. Anything that speeds up or eases that task is worth its weight in gold. Even if a timekeeper is working on a project that is billed on a fixed fee we still need accurate time entries to ensure that we are meeting our own profitability objectives.
Provides an interface with NextChapter Bankruptcy.
Provides an interface with the forms on our website and landing pages to allow for easy transmission of potential clients into our Clio system from these sources with little human intervention.
Its billing, invoicing and payment integration makes the billing cycle for clients easier.
Document management. It's still far easier for me to create Word templates and just use Word.
Centralized filing of client files. Like I said, I use Word. I work on a Mac and use Mac's tag structure. Clio should find a way to gather all files that have a certain tag and allow me to access them through Clio. Instead, I use Hazel and DropBox.
Case planning and budgeting. I use OmniFocus for project management, a self-created Excel spreadsheet for project budgeting and a cloud-based service for Gantt charts. How hard would it be to add robust project management tools to Clio?
Search feature for stored documents and information. Evernote has Clio beat hands-down, but I don't put client-sensitive information (only caselaw) on Evernote.
Case notes. This feature may be useful for high-volume practices, but I never use it.
You really have to get creative to make Clio work well. Support suggested tonight that I use other products instead since Clio can't even do simple things it promises like notify clients of their court dates. Insane.
Rather than talk in generalities, I'll give two specific examples. First, after updating my OS, I got locked out of Clio. I was back in, up and running, with no loss of data, within an hour thanks to Clio customer support. Second, I made some specific recommendation for features that I thought would be useful. Those recommendations fell in a black hole, with the suggestion that I try a very buggy third party integration app. Clio is making lots of money from lawyers using its software. Why can't Clio create the integrations and test them if Clio is not willing to build them into its platform?
CLIO Grow is custom-tailored for law firms to use off the shelf with some advanced customization options. CLIO Grow has some superior API integration options that integrate with answering services, online chatbot, website contact forms to capture new leads and automatically include them in the intake pipeline. As mentioned previously it integrates with HelloSign for no additional costs. CLIO Grow also offers API integrations with Mailchimp to add prospects to email drip campaigns in addition to built-in automated email campaigns within its own software. These features make it far more user friendly, automated, and robust compared with MyCase's CRM feature, and Pipedrive (a non-legal specific CRM).
There are three competitors to Intapp Time that I know of, and have looked at, but it's been years. Those competitors are Element55, Aderant Found Time and Smart Time. Every time I compared any of those products to the current version of Intapp Time then Intapp Time came out on top. Element 55 seemed have a bit of a clunky interface when I last looked. Aderant Found Time seemed like a limited success at copying Intapp Time; the software itself seemed a little burdensome, both on the client and the back end.
Obviously, time capture for billing is a vital function. At this time we believe IntApp Time is best of the breed in this regard, though competition is coming.
Recording timekeeping is something all timekeepers hate. IntApp time doesn't do as much as it potentially could to ease this pain, using predictive algorithms for example.
For timekeepers who are diligent, IntApp time provides all the tools necessary to record and closely manage worked time, its primary functionality.
