Clio vs. CosmoLex

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.

Incentivized

Because it is cloud based, CosmoLex is well suited for a lawyer starting up a practice as there is no need for a server. It is also very easy to use from home as it doesn't require a remote session to login, but can be used from any device. It is not well suited for a practice that requires a very fast pace for accounting as it takes a bit of time for each transaction to load, frustrating the user and causing them to lose momentum. On the other hand, if time is taken to set things up, there are a few tools that make importing expenses much quicker, and time can be made up by just taking some time to set things up.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Bookkeeping and billing
• Overall practice management
• Responsiveness and support

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• File separation and security like ethical was to prevent opposing council in the same company from having open access to other clients.
• More detailed user management.

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.

There is far too much reliance on symbols versus words, and it is sometimes difficult to navigate to the function you need. CosmoLex offers great support, knowledge base, and training, but sometimes you just don't have an hour to spend learning how to do a basic function that you have forgotten, and you just need it to WORK. It would be great to have the option of having word labels instead of picture symbols. It would also be great to have full functionality in the smartphone app. It just is not good. Not good. Pretty much everything keeping me tied to CosmoLex is on the money management side.

Incentivized

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?

Incentivized

I think that CosmoLex actually relies so much on its stellar support infrastructure that it forgets we don't actually want to have to use it. Just make the darn thing easier to navigate and understand, and you won't need all that client-facing support. You can choose chat, email, phone, knowledge base, embedded training videos within the different pages, but darn it all, I just want it to be more intuitive instead.

Incentivized

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).

Incentivized

I used CosmoLex over PC Law mostly because it was cloud-based, and I used it over Clio because the accounting for Clio required the use of both Clio and QuickBooks which made for very inefficient data entry. CosmoLex is slower than PCLaw when inputting entries, but I believe that in the long run, it will be better as CosmoLex is better situated to move forward with new technology.

Incentivized

• Hard to judge ROI, but it saves us money compared to our old server based system (ProLaw)
• More accessible from more places. I was able to continue working during a two week trip to the beach.
• The Client Portal (Clio Connect) is a positive way to send clients document securely, avoids the forwarded email / forwarded attachment problem.

Incentivized

• Time is the greatest factor when it comes to managing and creating documents and client accounts.
• Tracking client data.