Why Successful Law Firms Risk Becoming Irrelevant | Ronnie Gurion | ClioCon Clips 2026 | E01

Transcript

Rob Hanna (00:00)

Boston, we’re back. Welcome to Clio Con Clips 2026, a special mini-series from the Legally Speaking podcast proudly sponsored by Clio. I’m your host Rob Hanna and we’re back in Boston for our fourth ClioCon once again as an official media partner. What an exciting time to part the global legal community. We’re bringing you exclusive interviews and behind the scenes conversations with Clio’s leadership, legal tech pioneers, Riseman Award winners, and changemakers shaping the future of law.

Groundbreaking developments, legal AI and innovation to the future of our courts and access to justice, we’re getting to the heart of the biggest conversations transforming the legal profession. Expect bold ideas, fresh perspectives, exciting announcements, and practical insights from the people leading the way. So, wherever you’re tuning in from around the world, we’ve got you covered. Welcome to Cliocon Clips 2026. Let’s get into it.

Welcome our Cliocon Clips 2026 series and we are joined by name, title and organisation please.

Ronnie Gurion (01:04)

Ronnie Gurion, president of Clio.

Rob Hanna (01:06)

It’s always a pleasure to have you on the show. We appreciate you, appreciate your support for the show as well. Before we get into the the important stuff, when we last spoke you had three passports and you said there was potentially a fourth. Have we managed to get that sorted yet?

Ronnie Gurion (01:19)

I have not proceeded on that. no, on my to do list but hasn’t hasn’t moved forward yet.

Rob Hanna (01:24)

Not

quite yet. Well it’s been a huge year. Obviously since we last spoke, you’ve become president of Clio, congratulations and continue to role as C C O O. Lots has happened. Firstly, how do you feel?

Ronnie Gurion (01:34)

I feel great man, it’s been awesome year. ClioCon’s always very exhilarating meeting so many customers and just seeing the passion and the the the real like I hate to use this word, but like love for Clio. It’s it’s kind of a strange hokey word to to think about it in a in a B to B context. But man, these customers it’s such a great mutual relationship. So it’s very invigorating to spend time for a couple of days doing that.

Rob Hanna (01:59)

Yeah, I had the benefit of being at the Channel Partner Day the day before the conference started and just the the energy, the appreciation for collaboration, the buy-in from the customers and the community that’s being built. It’s a very exciting time. So I want to focus on you personally. So I mentioned obviously becoming president, you know, you’ve been guiding through Clio, one of the most significant chapters of growth. what’s one thing you’re going to approach differently as president, perhaps compared to your role last year? And what’s the toughest strategic trade-off you’re facing in terms of helping shape Clio’s future alongside Jack and the team?

Ronnie Gurion (02:29)

It’s constant evolution as the company scales the nature of of the role has to change. You know, I used to when I got here we were five hundred people, now we’re, you know, well over twenty five hundred people and so we’re doing many more things. We’ve got many more senior leaders, so I have to be obviously much less involved in kind of the the the you know the frontline stuff and it’s more how do I really support these new leaders and these new teams, get people ramped up and working

well together as we become more global, more complex, more multi-product. So the nature of the role continues to change and just how do how do I do that most effectively? We’ve we’ve hired a bunch of new leaders on the enterprise side of the business. Scott Gibbs who we announced as SVP of our enterprise business has been here about a month and he’s got a number of people underneath him who’ve also just joined. So that’s probably one of my biggest focus areas is just making sure that team is set up for maximum success and that our enterprise business

continues to really be a strong growth area for us. We’re only really a year into that since we’ve announced it. We’ve done amazingly well in the first year and I think we’re really just getting started with the product and the team that we’ve put in place and the the additional investment. We we’ve hired a a a significant amount of resources into that division, standing up new functions, new area new new new roles. And I think 27 we’re gonna see a lot of that really come to fruition come together. So that’s that’s probably my main focus.

Rob Hanna (03:53)

Yeah. And I mean the the number of logos just already in the Clio operate that have been on the presentations, you know, I have my legal recruiting side, some of those are clients of mine and I you know, the name is there now and I think you know the ambition of Clio is aggressive.

Ronnie Gurion (04:04)

And

there there’s so many more logos that you know we don’t have the right to share. So those are great logos, but but there’s you a a ton of logos behind that as well that are you know some of the most well known legal and in house corporate logos in the world.

Rob Hanna (04:17)

twenty one

was a great year for Clio because they got you, great year for us because that’s the year we started partnering with with Clio as well. But since then you’ve helped Clio go from a hundred million to over five hundred million, you know, annual occurring revenue. You’ve scaled the businesses obviously before with the likes of Uber for business. What’s the biggest leadership lesson you’ve learned about scaling without perhaps losing the culture and focus that makes Clio so successful?

Ronnie Gurion (04:40)

I

c I can’t remember the guy’s name, but I saw the guy from one of the senior guys from MuleSoft talk today and he was talking about how and it really resonated with me, it’s like I he said he said until he got to MuleSoft he didn’t really understand the difference between like A plus talent versus A A minus talent. And I I think for me one of the reasons why Clio has been able to kind of supercharge itself over the last five years is we’ve always had good talent, but I think we’ve brought in next level talent. You know, as the company gets

you know, bigger and more well known and and y you can start to recruit people who you know different type of person at that scale but people who who are just truly exceptional and then great people want to work with other great people. Great people can recruit and and and they can identify and they can recruit and convince people to come join. And what we see is where we’ve hired those types of leaders, we have transformed entire functions. You know, one leader can come into a multi-hundred person organization and in a short order get a lot of those same people to just

just up level the way that we’re performing. And we’re already performing well in these areas, but we can kinda take it from, you know, very good to to amazing. And and that’s ultimately been

where I spend a lot of my time. I’ve been fortunate to hire, you know, a lot of our leaders. Yeah. And overwhelmingly I feel like we have hired great folks. And then of course when you come into a an organization like that, then everybody kind of learns quickly, they work in the right way, collaboratively, and it just goes so I it all is about people at the end of the day. They especially now because the technology can do so much more. It’s about how do we really operate as effectively as possible in and l leverage the technology. But you the the the actual

Software development used to be the the bottleneck. Now it’s it’s it’s more about judgment, insight, strategy, alignment, and how do we execute.

Rob Hanna (06:25)

Yeah, like the the talent you’re acquiring and and buying and getting is is is phenomenal. I mean I’ve followed the journeys and we’ll talk about the acquisitions in in a moment, but you I’ve known Ed Walters for years, Damian Real, even the set of interviews we’ve been doing this series for you guys, you know, Bridget, Pablo, these are just incredible people. You know, the the caliber, just to stress that point, because I’m sort of biased being in the talent space, really has amplified and it’s a testament to what you’ve been able to do with the the Clio T and to attract this and make this happen. So, you know, we’ve seen Cher do the acquisition V-Lix, Learn Hand Page has been

announced this year as well. You’ve sort of mentioned the new experience across Grow, Manage and Work. You know these acquisitions and major project launches are very exciting to announce but delivering on one seamless customer experience is no easy task. So how do you turn all of these different technologies, teams, cultures into one very connected business and what’s the clearest measure of success?

Ronnie Gurion (07:18)

I mean I I’m answering your questions like from an HR perspective, but it it really does start

that way. you have to be very intentional about organizational design so people work well together, that it is integrated. you know when you buy a new product or a new company or you launch a new product, you know, the questions are okay, well how are we gonna organize ourselves? You know, where’s everybody gonna report into? Is it gonna be you know, what’s gonna be in product, what’s gonna be in sales, and is it a separate sales team? I mean the the more things you create that are separate, the more difficult it gets to create an integrated internal

experience and an internal organizational experience. And so

I think that having our people understand and know the whole product suite from end to end, which was how we sell it, how we support it, how we market it is is essential and then that manifested into the right decisions for how we ultimately bring that to to customers. So yeah, I think those are some some important decisions and it’s always tricky because you’re kinda like, well this is a different product phones, it’s a different product or Clio work, will me but

VLX, it was like, wow, this is now a legal AI research-oriented platform, you know, our traditional and we have like mm you know many, many hundreds of salespeople, many, many hundreds of customer success people. So it’s like their soul focus was on really selling our legacy product suite. Now we have this whole new product suite. Do we have two different organizations? Do we have one? And we made the decision to keep it as consolidated and push our teams to be enabled, to do the training, to think the organization.

And I think that’s the winning solution because now when we talk to a customer we can have that consistent, integrated experience, get the full value of the platform. So anyway, that’s that’s what I would say on that front.

Rob Hanna (09:00)

And

it’s and it’s working, it’s evidently working. I I get fascinated by the Clio mission to transform the legal experience for all. So there’s so many things going on, but it has to be to deliver and double down on that on that mission. But now Clio is supporting over 400,000 legal professionals across 130 countries around the world. You touched on obviously strengthening the enterprise leadership team with Scott Gibbs who’s who’s joined.

How do you build the world’s for the world’s biggest, largest law firms without losing the simplicity and customer focus you that made Clio very successful with the smaller practices? And how do you decide what to prioritize and importantly what to say no to?

Ronnie Gurion (09:34)

You asked lots of very simple, narrow questions.

Rob Hanna (09:39)

Look, when I’ve got one of the biggest strategic minds in legal tech, I want the insights running, I want the juicy thinking here.

Ronnie Gurion (09:44)

Two different questions there. I mean I think in terms of building for enterprise and building for SMB. if you look at the history of technology and s software, it is generally considered and there’s more evidence, more more examples of companies who started servicing SMB and then were able to move up and serve increasingly complex customers. it is more difficult to go the other direction.

It is it it is it is easier to add additional functionality than it is to kind of strip down to more simplicity. So I think first of all that I think works in our favor because in our DNA we have really optimized for I think the best customer experience, the user experience in in legal. And we’ve been increasing the the the the capabilities of our platform from solos to servicing, you know, many thousands or multiple thousands of mid-market firms.

And this is just an evolution of that. So our teams are are really thoughtful and really focused on that. And then the other thing I’ll say is a l there is definitely some some technology which is specific to enterprise, but a lot of the capabilities that we have and that we’ve acqui we whether we’ve acquired or that we built it, there’s there’s a lot of commonality between what shows up for an SMB customer or an enterprise customer. It may have slightly different manifestations, it may have some additional controls or

security measures or things of that nature that enterprise customers may require on top of it, but our library, Clio Library, Vincent, which is powering both Vincent for Enterprise as well as Clio work or underlying the the same same core engine, there may be some additional capabilities. So so a lot of that, you’re getting a lot of pollin cross-pollination and synergy between our two, and of course we’re then very thoughtful about where do we need to do the additional enhancements for one particular segment versus the other. But wherever possible we try to get that cross pollination.

And then prioritization, I mean, that’s a ongoing thing. It’s harder than ever. It’s harder than ever because you can you know, a s a team of three can launch a whole new product area in a relatively short amount of time in what use it might have taken, you know, multiple teams a year or two years to go build. so it’s it’s it’s very challenging. You can try more bets, you can be more expansive, and I think that’s about how do you try more things, get early signal.

Hold those teams accountable and then, you know, really start to double down on things that you’re seeing the right feedback on. So that’s kinda how we’ve changed and and been able to evolve, which is really exciting. I think our ability to to bring more things to market more quickly is is is better than ever and now it’s just about that process.

Rob Hanna (12:19)

And there’s no greater case study of how quickly you’re bringing stuff to market because Jack historically in his opening keynote would go through every individual update and it’s just physically not possible now at the velocity every two minutes of of change. And that’s again testament to you coming in driving and bringing this world class talent along the way. also I I read with interest your latest CLIO trends report, which comprehensively is probably the most important piece of research and data for anyone who’s serious about legal innovation, go and check it out. It’s available from CLIO websites. But the latest research actually shows connected AI across legal work

Practice management record around 10% higher revenue per responsible lawyer than comparable non adopters. Yet only 9.5% of stalled prospective client matters received a follow up within 30 days. Q, Clio phones. So now connecting client conversations to legal workflows is the biggest opportunity, not just sophisticated AI, but fixing the everyday client experience. And what’s one metric every managing partner should be tracking?

Ronnie Gurion (13:15)

I mean I think having a really tight understanding of your matter progression by stages is is critical. just like a sales funnel for us, understanding how each lawyer and where in the firm and and who in the firm is seeing the efficiency. And then how do you double click and say, Hey, this these group of lawyers are best in this part of the the the the matter cycle. What can we learn from there? Because

While you’ve deployed software and AI and things of that nature, probab you know, increasingly at firms, the usage and the adoption is very inconsistent. And that’s what a lot of firms are struggling with is okay, we’ve rolled out these tools, you know, you have early adopters and and tech coefficientos and you have resistors and you know, a lot of people in the middle and and even if they’re not resisting, it’s just the knowledge. Like, hey, I didn’t know that, you know, these tools, like you said, w we and other tools are releasing features at such a fast pace. And that’s not their job. I mean their job is to be lawyers. So

Yes. So I think a firm, a managing director, needs to think about how do I create an organization or a set of resources and processes that are continually doing the best practice learnings from within the firm and then propagating those out as additional kind of standard best practice as much as possible. So that’s that’s one thing I think a lot of firms I’m hearing here are some have made progress but a lot of them are seeking ways to do that better.

Rob Hanna (14:42)

I mentioned before I get transfixed about Clio’s mission and you know, I think this is just beyond smart. Clio’s understanding of well, we make the lawyers faster.

We need to make sure the courts can keep up. So, you know, you’ve made a big move into the judiciary, you’ve made acquisitions of Learn Hand, fascinating next step. Obviously, you know, Pablo, Bridget coming in. But supporting judges in court must be very different from serving commercial law firms. So how does Clio change the way you think about operations, trust and scaling? And how do you define success when improving the delivery of justice matters just as much as commercial growth?

Ronnie Gurion (15:14)

Yeah, this is a amazing strategic evolution, I think, for CLIO. it’s a huge opportunity, huge need, and it really in terms of improving the access to justice for all and the impact that we can help make on the legal system, I think a excites a lot of clions. I also think it’s gonna be a good business for us because I think that is is is a large market that is not very well served. And I think our innovation and the

team that we’ve put together and that some of the technology is is gonna be fascinating. I mean so obviously very early we just you know really put that team together so I think the strategy’s still being refined but but you I’ve seen some of the early early examples there and I think I think we’re gonna do great things there. And then operationally, you know we put together a team to sell into go and support government clients a couple years ago. That team is increasingly working with hundreds of different

government organizations, city, state, national entities. And so I think judiciary fits quite nicely into that organization in terms of expanding the way we work with public sector clients around the world. So yeah, a lot to come there. I’m sure we’ll make a lot of progress this year and very excited to help support that team.

Rob Hanna (16:30)

Yeah, and that leads where I wanted to go next. Next twelve months, what are you most excited about?

Ronnie Gurion (16:34)

The stat that we presented where we’ve had 10,000 firms on Clio work in less than a year is I think everybody’s excited about how Clio work is being received and the value that that’s creating for our our customers. And we’re just getting started there. We’re bringing that to more and more countries. and as we continue to bring more and more capabilities, I think work work will be, you know, the biggest growth driver for for Clio. And so that’s where

lot of our time and focus is is gonna continue to be spent next year.

Rob Hanna (17:06)

Yeah and we we have the benefit obviously I go to s of a lot of your Clio Elevates in the UK and you know obviously I know with with Spain the launch this year that just you know that that growth and the reception and you know how this is transforming lawyers’ day-to-day life, Clio works. It’s your most successful product in the company’s history and I I absolutely see where that that that’s gonna go. You sort of tease saying I give you the the tricky questions. I always think we try to come prepared, we get the content, we think what could we ask, the right things, but if you were interviewing you right now, what’s the right question we should be asking you?

Ronnie Gurion (17:37)

I think a question that I get is, man, Clio’s trying to do a lot. Yeah. H how how how how can you you know are you worried about trying to take on too much and potentially losing focus? Yeah. you know, judiciary, enterprise, phones, international, all of that. But my answer to that is no.

Rob Hanna (17:58)

But you wouldn’t be saying yes to decisions if you believed it was

Ronnie Gurion (18:00)

No,

I exactly. I I think we push hard and we invest behind those priorities and you know, we’ve gone from five hundred people to like I said, you know, well over twenty five hundred people. So at that scale you should be able to do numerous things. You know, if you bring in the right talent and get the right team working together and you know, there’s there’s there there’s overlap between all of those. The they’re not they’re not completely you know, we’re not in healthcare and telecom. I mean, you know, it’s all legal, legal adjacent and and so there is a lot of synergies there and and

So that’s how we’re we’re we’re focused on it. it’s a balance, that’s what we have to be you know, really executing very well. But I think that’s a question that I get asked. And yeah, we think about that. Of course, it’s always that tension between taking on as much as you can handle, pushing the envelope, and making sure you’re not not spreading yourself too thin. Well that

Rob Hanna (18:49)

Sound

like a broken record. You have to, with the mission, with the North Star, you have to go in these directions. It’s it’s to me it’s it it’s straightforward. It’s never surprising when Clio makes that move. It’s just more, we’re delivering on our promise.

Ronnie Gurion (19:01)

And and with Jack there’s no other way. He’s a pretty ambitious guy.

Rob Hanna (19:03)

And that’s right. And you know, we’re up go beyond limits, right? And so the people you partner with, you know, we’re we’re we’re generally honoured to be here and we feel like it brings the best in your partners, it brings the best in your customers. You know, I see it coming even from the UK conferences to the US. The the intelligence of the questions from the law firm partners here, they’re hungry for it, they want it, and they’re pushing you and you’re receiving that. And I think that energy is what’s keeping that flywheel that you talk about as a company going high and high. I talk a lot about

COI, everyone focuses on ROI, which of course important, but cost of inaction. So, you know, you’ve helped scale businesses through major periods of disruption, you’ve obviously been at Airbnb Boober, etcetera, et cetera. If you were sitting opposite a managing partner who believes they’ve still got a few years before they need to fundamentally rethink their business, what would you tell them? And what’s the biggest opportunity they risk never getting back by waiting?

Ronnie Gurion (19:53)

would

hope there’s not too many managing partners of sizable firms that have that mentality. I mean I’m sure there’s you know a range of better you know people out there but I I I I think at this stage if you don’t have awareness of how technology and AI is transforming legal that would be you know negligent. It’d be negligent. And and then it’s about how do you how do you action on that and I think you have to be as in

innovative, creative, disruptive as possible. You cannot be, you know, everybody else with the innovators’ dilemma and you know a lot of these firms are doing are still doing so well, right? Even with the impact of AI, hey, well, partner revenues, revenue per employee, overall revenue, all those things are at records industry wide when you see the stats. And so it’s not like the sky is falling. These are good businesses and in many ways this trend is

is allowing people to do more legal work. But you need to position yourself that there’s going to be increasing differentiation between firms that are really operating at the leading edge of of of how new modern law firms are going to operate. And if you’re not in that ballpark or in that that game, you’re you’re gonna really risk irrelevancy. And also staff, I mean, well who would want to go work for a company where you have to still use faxes or you don’t have access to

the type of computer you want. You know, there’re still legal practice management solutions that don’t work very well on mobile and don’t work on Macs. Yeah. And those employees are very frustrated, but it’s only gonna be amplified because the difference between being on a Mac or a PC is one thing. The difference between having AI take on a lot of the drudgery, help you be successful, have a better work life balance, earn more money versus not, I mean you’re just gonna walk with your feet and and go to there’s gonna be plenty of firms where you can have the the type of modern experience that you need for your career.

for your progression, for your compensation, all those things. So y y you need to be on the forefront of it. I mean I think it’s kinda staying the obvious, but yeah.

Rob Hanna (21:55)

I think you’re creating the friction-free law firm of the future. You are moving away from Clio is going help you manage, we’re going to help you actually get stuff done. We’re creating context engineering where we’re rethinking how we can do this, deliver, bring more value. It’s truly inspiring, impressive what you’ve achieved. Looking forward before I let you go, what does a good year look like when we’re in Seattle next year for ClioCon?

Ronnie Gurion (22:17)

Good year just having more and more customers who are having amazing experiences who tell us they love the product, that it’s transformed the way that they work and that the the way that their staff feels and they’re happy and if we do that then like all the business results will will take care of themselves. So I mean that’s the mission of Clio is really to be very client centric and our so many of our staff shows up that way. So that’s that’s the North Star. If we do that everything else will take care of itself.

Rob Hanna (22:46)

And I I don’t think it’s if it’s when. And I think it’s been truly inspiring. congratulations on becoming president. Congratulations on everything Clio’s achieved this year from all of us on the League Speaking podcast. For now, Ronnie, over an hour. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub.

Legally speaking club over on Discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com as a link to join our community there. Over and out.