Welcome to Clio Con Clips 2024, the mini podcast series based on our latest visit to Clio Con. Here, we discuss our thoughts and findings with the guest speakers that attended this influential event.

Our first guest, Jack Newton is the founder and CEO of the innovative and inspiring legal tech company Clio.

Set up as an annual event, Clio Con gathers the finest legal minds and impressive tech to deliver amazing results that shape the legal world.

In this episode, Jack shares insights into Clio’s impressive AI technologies, as well as what their new feature Clio Duo will do to improve and streamline the future of law. Join us, as we approach the new frontiers that Jack’s company offers.

Stay tuned to make the most of the key points from Clio Con’s amazing guest speakers and harness your momentum.

Clio would also like to announce a new offer, a heavily discounted price for Clio Con 2025, which will be in Boston, Massachusetts.

Support the show

Episode Transcript

Robert Hanna: Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast, Clio Con Clips mini-series.

I’m your host, Rob Hanna, and I’m excited to bring you a series of dynamic, insightful interviews recorded live from Clio Con 2024 in Austin, Texas.

This year’s theme, harnessing your momentum couldn’t be more timely for the legal industry, as we face rapid advancements in technology, shifting client expectations and new ways of delivering legal services.

Staying ahead means more than just keeping up. It’s about driving sustained momentum in your career and practice.

That’s what ClioCon is all about, bringing together the brightest minds in legal tech to explore how we can turn these challenges into opportunities for unstoppable growth.

In this mini series, I’ll be sitting down with key thought leaders and innovators to uncover their strategies for embracing change, overcoming obstacles, and pushing the legal industry forwards.

Each bite-size episode will provide actionable insights that you can apply to your own work.

Whether you’re here in Austin, or tuning in from anywhere around the world, this series is your front row seat to the conversations shaping the future of law.

So get ready to be inspired.

Let’s dive into the exciting world of legal tech and innovation together.

So, could you please introduce yourself, name, title and organisation?

Jack Newton: I am Jack Newton, the Founder and CEO of Clio.

Robert Hanna: You absolutely are.

And it’s a pleasure to be recording live once again at my second Clio Con here in Austin, Texas.

I didn’t think you could top Nashville, but you have.

Jack Newton: Thank you.

Robert Hanna: It’s absolutely incredible.

The people, the community, everything you’re building is, is fantastic.

But I want to talk about this year’s theme because, yeah, my eyes lit up when you were talking about harnessing your momentum and then when you went into contact.

So, that’s been the cornerstone really of Clio’s journey, momentum.

What strategies have been most effective in maintaining Clio’s journey when it comes to being a pioneer in, in legal tech

Jack Newton: OK, I think it’s pretty straightforward.

We’ve been listening to our customers, relentlessly innovating on their behalf and, focusing on execution and, you know, I think if you focus on that relentless pursuit of excellence and of executing at a really high level, you’re going to be able to maintain your momentum.

And I think, what I constantly caution the team against is becoming complacent.

I think the moment you treat your success or take your success for granted is when you run the risk of losing your momentum.

You know, as I talked about in the keynote, it’s all about continuing to add energy to your flywheel, reduce friction in your flywheel.

And I think as long as you realise, like, hey, we’ve got a good thing going, but we got to keep putting the work in.

We got to keep our, our shoulder to the grindstone and keep innovating, keep driving things forward.

You’re going to be able to maintain that momentum.

And the minute you take your foot off the gas, I think you know that’s, that’s where you enter risky territory.

So that’s the mindset of Clio, it’s just keep executing. Keep listening to our customers and keep innovating on their behalf in a way that might surprise them. Sometimes, you know, customers don’t always tell you exactly what they need. They will tell you what they want, but maybe not what they need. And that’s where I think innovation comes in.

And that’s that’s what. Keeps me so excited on a daily basis.

Robert Hanna: Yeah. And I’m excited too. And I think I’ve said this to you before in previous podcasts. My late grandfather who was a lawyer said anyone could be successful, Rob. It’s far harder to stay successful.

Jack Newton: Yes.

Robert Hanna: And it’s, it’s so true. And it talks to what you were talking about. And I want to talk about that flywheel in a minute, but we’re celebrating 12 years of Clio Con.

Congratulations.

How has this event evolved over the years in promoting innovation within the legal industry specifically?

Because every time I come here, I come away with insights, knowledge, networks.

But I want your, Founder, CEO mindset on how this event has evolved for you over the years.

Jack Newton: If we rewind the clock back to 2013 when we started doing Clio Con, one thing is that we were, you know, really utterly unequipped to host a conference, as a company back in 2013.

You know, as a company we were only five years old at that point and, building a product and, and making a software company successful is hard enough.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And I remember, you know, some of my own team, my, my own wife, many people, you know, in my sphere thought I was insane when I said I, I want to launch a conference.

Yeah, that stacks on top of what we’re doing with the core product.

And, we really had no right to think that we would be able to execute on both things at once.

But I viewed it as being so essential because what I saw was building a great product is, maybe even less than half of the equation.

What we realised, what I realised pretty early on with Clio was, we are trying to catalyse a movement.

We’re trying to catalyse a shift in mindset around how lawyers build law practices.

And to really catalyse the change we wanted to see in the industry, we needed to not just build great products and great technology, but we had to actually lead the way in terms of thought leadership and education around what that change could look like.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And I think what we sparked in 2013 was the first inklings of what would become a movement over time.

The first Clio Con was a pretty modest affair. It was in the Hotel Sax in Chicago. It was about 230 people.

Robert Hanna: Yep. 

Jack Newton: I didn’t even stand on a stage for the first Clio Con. I was standing at the front of a, pretty boring conference room in a hotel with two pull up banners to my side, and, and a keynote presentation.

But that planted the seeds for what has grown into a pretty incredible conference.

You know, we, we have, 20 times the number of attendees at this year’s Clio Con than we did at that first.

And when I talk about a movement, this idea that we can transform the practice of law for, for good, we can transform the legal experience for all.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: I think we’ve made significant headway in that, but still feel that we’re in the early innings of that transformation. So that was the vision with Clio Con. That’s where we’ve come in the last 13, you know, 12 years now of, of executing on the conference and it’s been a ton of fun and, and I’m, I’m so proud of what, I, I know people can’t see what you and I are looking at but the, the scale of this is pretty incredible.

Maybe it’s coming through on the audio.

Robert Hanna: Yeah. No. Well your passion always seeps through Jack you know and I’m, I, I, I admire what you’ve done but the community you’ve built, because through community and you are sharing thought leadership, you’re educating, and I always feel so warm.

I come to events at Clio and I feel part of the Clio community and it’s inclusive and it’s, you know, people are happy to share ideas.

How can I help you?

Or maybe, you know, and it’s a real collaborative perspective.

And I think that what really makes it sets it apart on top of all the other amazing things you’re doing.

But this momentum mindset, which, you know, I’d never really thought about it the way you positioned it today, but it’s so, so true and so crucial. And I have read Good to Great by Jim Collins and you referenced that in your, your keynote as well.

And we’re talking about the flywheel effect earlier. But let’s dig into that because, I loved it when you were talking about energy isn’t enough. And I always say motivation isn’t enough because you need the motivation to create a habit. And then when you’ve got the habit, that happens. And you were talking about energy isn’t enough. We need to make sure we use that energy to improve the flywheel and to get that momentum and keep the momentum going.

And I, I love that.

So it’s just we’re saying the flywheel is essential.

So, can you elaborate, for those who weren’t there on how law firms can potentially apply this concept to improve operations and their client service?

Jack Newton: So, maybe popping up a level, the theme of this year’s conference is momentum.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And I think one of the best ways of thinking about momentum is, how you might capture energy in a flywheel.

And, and this is what Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great.

And he talks about, you know, some of the most remarkable businesses on the planet have one thing in common and, and that’s that there’s often some kind of flywheel at the heart of that business that is, a mutually reinforcing, synergy across a variety of different inputs.

And in the case of amazon.com, which is one of the examples Jim uses, you know, it’s this idea that you, you build the largest, community of buyers, you have the most number of buyers and that’s going to in turn draw the greatest number of sellers that are then selling product at the greatest volume, which in turn allows them to deliver that product at the lowest prices, which in turn draws more buyers to that marketplace and in turn draws more sellers to that marketplace. And you build this self-reinforcing flywheel that becomes almost unstoppable once you have those mutually reinforcing inputs.

And, I love to think about how do we apply that thinking to law firms and how do you invest in a flywheel that is, driving both, energy through the, the inputs that you’re driving into that flywheel as well as maintaining the momentum of the flywheel by eliminating as much friction as you can to build this, this powerful flywheel of growth in a law firm.

So this idea that you commented, I’m, I’m glad you, you teased that out of the keynote because it wasn’t a it was a bit of a subtle point. But this idea that energy isn’t enough.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: You can expend all the energy you want on something.

But the real question is how are you capturing that energy in a way that is sustainable and driving some kind of long-term benefit.

And that’s where the idea of momentum comes from.

If you think about momentum, it’s energy translated into something that can last for a long amount of time.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And this, this idea of a, a flywheel, again, I think it’s so essential to how we think about how law firms can grow. How they can think about optimising their processes. How they can think about setting up different architectures of execution, referrals, lead generation. How, even down to the mechanics of, how do they generate documents in their law firm. How do they, how do they go through the lead intake process. How do you examine every aspect of what you’re doing in a law firm and think about how it’s either contributing to the energy and momentum of your flywheel or how it’s eliminating friction in your internal or client facing processes.

Robert Hanna: Yeah. No, I couldn’t agree more and one of the other things I love that you talked about, I assume it was intentional, is around like the connected law firm and how you’re thinking about your suite of tools very strategically. There’s a clear road map. And so, you know, Clio Manage, Clio Grow, Clio Payments, you know, I could go on and on.

These are really redefining how people are going to deliver legal services now and indeed in the future.

But how do you ensure that these tools are going to keep pace? You know, what are you doing to ensure we’re in the AI revolution, that what you’re bringing to market is really, fit for purpose in terms of what you’re hearing from your clients, but also making sure that you’re ahead of the game, because Clio has always been a pioneering company.

Jack Newton: Well, I, I think a big part of that is, being finally attuned to where the state-of-the-art is, especially as it relates to AI.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And defining the art of the possible, in the context of what you can deliver in terms of value for your clients.

And, I like to talk about the concept of inventing on the behalf of our customers where, I think if we do a great job of listening to our customers and listening to what their pain points are.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: And, and what’s tough about this is it’s often you’ve got to go deeper than just listening to a feature request that your, your customers might have and actually understand what is the underlying pain that you’re trying to address and solve in, for that customer. And then look at the technology landscape, assess what the art of the possible is. How can I take the leading edge of today’s technologies and deliver a solution to this, this customer and ideally a broad cross-section of customers that really solves that underlying problem in a way that, they may have never been able to anticipate would be what the ultimate solution looked like. You know, there’s a famous quote from Henry Ford saying, you know, if, if I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses. You know, the automobile was, was kind of the leap forward that ultimately solved the problem the customers were asking for.

I think we see many situations and opportunities like that with AI, where customers can articulate what their problems are. We can understand at a deep level how we might be able to address those, and we can, with, with the benefit of looking at the leading edge of what’s possible with AI, unlock how we can apply the very latest, greatest, best technologies to that underlying problem and unlock something pretty special, yeah.

Robert Hanna: And you know, I was, as you know, we sat down in Nashville last year and you were teasing Clio Duo at that time. 12 months on, it’s here, it’s there for people to go out and try. You even did a live demonstration which couldn’t have gone any better, you know, at a conference.

Jack Newton: It worked. Thank you, demo gods for.

Robert Hanna: And it was just super impressive. And I loved even like the intuitiveness of it and the fact the way you can communicate with it on a human level. It just worked perfectly. So, you know, this is a big step forward. Clio are going all in on AI, in addition to other things, you made that very clear as well.

But how do you envision calls like Clio Duo reshaping the day-to-day legal workflows that have been very traditional within the industry? And what does this necessarily mean for the future of legal professionals in your opinion?

Jack Newton: Well, I think what I’ve heard, you know, in the, six hours or so since I finished giving that keynote and the feedback I’ve heard from the press and media and customers is, this is a game changer. This is dramatically going to transform the way our customers work, the way legal operations work in a typical law firm, in a way that’s probably hard to anticipate today.

One of the quotes I referenced in today’s keynote is Roy Amara’s quote around the impact of technology being underestimated in the, or sorry, overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term. I think, what’s maybe easy to anticipate is, here’s a bunch of ways Clio Duo is going to help streamline and simplify work for anybody in a law firm in a really profound way, right out of the gate. It’s going to safe people hours and hours a day, and hours and hours and hours a week. This is going to have a profound impact on the day-to-day of lawyers work and legal professionals work more broadly.

What I think is harder to anticipate is, when we look at that exponential increase in capabilities I talked about in the keynote, the fact that we’re, we’re talking about this orders of magnitude leap in capabilities in just a few years is, what does Clio Duo enable for law firms in 2027? What does it enable by the end of this decade?

And I think we’re going to see in that case a, a much more profound evolution of AI and where lawyers and legal professionals are spending their time as a result of what AI has been able to automate away.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: I think we’re going to see AI that is very well situated to address, for example, one of the data points I talked about is how, catastrophically bad lawyers are at picking up the phone or answering emails. Not not lawyers in particular, but law firms in, in general, 70% roughly are not responding to emails or phone calls from clients that are looking for help. And, AI will be able to play a huge role in helping being more responsive to client demand. What we’re seeing today in terms of the capabilities of something like Clio Duo to, draft documents, to answer questions, we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

So I, I couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds. But I’ll also, you know, be very humble in acknowledging I think that, even us that are at the frontier of what this technology can do will have a hard time anticipating what the long-term impacts of this will be on, on legal work.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, but one thing I found very encouraging and I think it was good of you to point this out is, legal’s adoption now, you know, you gave some statistics about how people within the legal, when it was the Cloud, very late to adopt, but actually the legal industry as an industry in terms of adopting and wanting AI. So can you share a little bit about what you touched on in the keynote? Because I thought that was fascinating and showed actually legal is at the table now in terms of wanting to be.

Jack Newton: Yeah, legal’s not just at the table, but kind of leading the way which, which is I, I think basically a first.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: What, what we saw in our Legal Trends Report data was that, the percentage of law firms that are using AI meaningfully in some way in their practice has skyrocketed in basically the last year to more than 79% of lawyers.

And, when we compare that adoption cycle, that again has, has mainly happened in the last year, to the cloud adoption cycle to get to that same point. The cloud adoption cycle was more than a decade.

Robert Hanna: Yeah.

Jack Newton: So what we’ve seen, in the simplest of terms, is a decade of adoption in, in cloud, compressed into a year for adoption in AI.

And, I think that shows just the level of appetite and excitement that exists around AI and the capabilities it’s bringing to the table for lawyers where, for the first time I’m seeing lawyers pull technology into their law firms when in the past, I think it’s been, at least for some law firms, something that feels like, is begrudgingly adopted after it’s been foisted upon them by some vendor, some consultant, you know, maybe it’s a tech forward colleague that’s, that’s helping them adopt technology, but this idea that AI is being pulled into law firms with what I see is almost insatiable demand. Like even with Clio Duo, what we announced this morning, tremendous positive response. But I’m already hearing from customers like what’s next? What’s next? Like I’m hungry for the next thing, and that’s so exciting to see and something I’ve really never seen in my now 16 plus year career in legal tech. This, this appetite to pull technology into the firm is pretty, pretty cool and pretty exciting to see.

Robert Hanna: Super exciting. And one thing I found rather amusing at your keynote earlier was a, a tombstone. Yes.

Jack Newton: Yeah.

Robert Hanna: And I want to talk about this because it’s linked to AI adoption and I’ll put some context to this. There was a tombstone which had some dates on which I can let you elaborate on Jack related to the billable hours.

So, you know, how do you see traditional revenue models in the legal industry being more challenged and how is Clio supporting firms and perhaps rethinking about their billing models and what role do you see AI basically in changing the future of legal pricing?

Jack Newton: Well, look, the fundamental disconnect that I’ve seen for, for years now is, the growing disparity between the, the value a lawyer’s delivering and the billable hours ability to capture that value. When you look at the impact that AI has layered on top of that, especially with the latest ABA formal ethics opinion on, how you can account for AI productivity gains, I see basically the survival of the billable hour as being untenable for most law firms. And what I mean by that is, this formal ethics opinion from the ABA says, states that you cannot bill a client for the time savings that AI or automation has helped you deliver to them. Meaning that essentially there’s no way for a law firm to leverage the benefits of automation or AI in the way that it bills their clients. If you leverage AI to do something in one hour that used to take you 10 hours, you can’t build a client 10 hours for that. You need to build a client one hour for that. Now, what I think that highlights is again, it just underscores and makes completely untenable the disconnect between the value that lawyers are creating for their clients and the billable hours ability to capture that benefit. And I think what this will do is help drive a, a shift away from the billable hour model. Again, I don’t think it’s ever going to die. So the tombstone may have been a little bit of hyperbole, but, I do think that the, the days of the billable hour being the predominant method of billing are going to fade into the background and there’s an urgent need for flat fee models, fixed fee models to, to, to persevere over the entrenched habits we have around the, the, the billable hour.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, I think very fair comments. I’ll be curious to see where the billable hour eventually holds up, but I definitely shared that image with a few friends of mine that are pioneers on the value-based pricing, fixed fees and they were, they were all with the, the thumbs up.

Okay, one thing I also know is very important to Clio and us here on the Legally Speaking Podcast, we do a lot of talk talking around this is regarding access to justice and it’s something you talk to and rightly so every year at Clio Con. So looking ahead, what do you see the role of Clio playing in bridging that gap from access to justice through technology and what are some of the most significant challenges and opportunities you see ahead with potentially delivering on that mission of trying to transform the legal experience for all, but also helping that access to justice gap?

Jack Newton: Well, I I see those two outcomes as being inextricably linked and supportive of one another. I think if we succeed in driving broader adoption of technology in legal, if we succeed in driving broader adoption of cloud-based technologies, if we succeed in driving the adoption of AI in legal, we’re going to succeed in making legal services more accessible.

Because I think this is the modern day equivalent of adopting the mechanical loom or the assembly line for the automobile where, these technologies can help make people and legal professionals, when I say people, legal professionals so much more productive that it’s going to help drive down the barriers around accessibility. And as I hope was painfully obvious in my keynote this morning, accessibility isn’t just about cost. It’s not just about the fact that legal services are out of reach for most consumers.

It’s about the fact that legal, legal professionals aren’t even picking up the phone.

Robert Hanna: Yep. 

Jack Newton: They’re not answering emails like we see the profession, inaccessible, in a variety of dimensions today, whether it’s cost, literal responsiveness, whether it’s, if the services are priced and packaged in a way that are accessible to consumers. And back to one of your early questions about why we’re doing Clio Con, we think that we need to drive both a mindset shift that is ultimately more client centered, as I talked about at length in my, my book, The Client Centered Law Firm. We need to drive that adoption cycle. We need to drive that mindset shift and we need to drive adoption of the cloud and we need to drive adoption of AI. And if we succeed in those things, I believe in them, the bottom of my heart that we will see meaningful progress in improving access to justice. And again, as I highlighted in my keynote, one of the concepts I talked about is, is the fact that, I think the access to justice problem boils down to, the friction that exists between, consumers of legal services and, and providers of legal services that can help solve the problems those consumers have. There’s an enormous amount of friction in that system today, and I think technology, coupled with a mindset shift can help, eliminate that friction, or at least dramatically reduce it, which will have a positive impact on access to justice.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and absolutely, we, we, we support that 100% here. And before I let you go, Jack, you shared some very exciting news at the end of your keynote of Clio Con next year. So, I won’t burst the bubble, but could you let people know where that’s going to be, why they need to be there? And I believe there’s an incredible offer as we speak regarding Clio Con next week as well.

Jack Newton: Yes, yes, we were thrilled to announce this morning that Clio Con 2025 will be in, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Where, you know, Boston’s. Have you ever been?

Robert Hanna: I’ve never been. You keep taking me to places I’ve never been, so I love it.

Jack Newton: OK, well, you’re going to love Boston. Boston is very different place than Austin. We’re steeped in, in history, of course, home to a couple of the best known universities in, in America, Harvard and MIT, a very hotbed of innovation just like Austin. And, it couldn’t be more excited to a thriving legal tech community in, in Boston as well. So couldn’t be more excited to bring Clio Con to Boston. And we, we have a, an attendee offer that we can share on the, the show here. Maybe we can put a, a link to the, the registration link that has the lowest price that will ever exist for Clio Con 2025. And we can post that in the show notes for your listeners.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, no, absolutely. Jack, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you once again on the show. Love Clio Con, love what Clio’s doing. Excited. I mean, I sat in front of you 12 months on and you know this 12 months you’ve done a Series F, you’ve brought AI to the table, Clio Duo, building this incredible community. Just super exciting. What’s one message you would like to leave our listeners with as you close today?

Jack Newton: I would say that if you haven’t already figured out how you’re going to be incorporating AI into your practice, figure out a way you can do it in a small but meaningful way. I, I think a lot of lawyers are intimidated by what might feel like a, a boil the ocean kind of challenge, like how do I, how do I get this integrated into my, my platform quickly? And the truth is, it’s not something you’re ever going to do overnight. You’ve got to find ways of, and we’ll hear from James Clear tomorrow, the, the author of Atomic Habits. But you need to incorporate these technologies in your practice in a way that is incremental. In a way that you’re, getting a little bit better every day, you’re focusing on incremental, iterative and relentless improvement. And you need to start figuring out how you’re lacing Clio into your, I’m sorry, AI and maybe Clio as well, but AI whether it’s from Clio or not into your day-to-day because, I think the stakes are existential. You know, one of the things I, I said in the keynote that I stand behind is, law firms that leverage AI will replace those that don’t.

Robert Hanna: Yeah

Jack Newton: I think that is inevitable. So you need to be on the right side of this change. And, that’s my call to action. That’s where I’ll, I’ll sign off on.

Robert Hanna: Yeah. And it’s the right one as far as I see it Jack, always a pleasure.

Jack Newton: Thanks Rob.

Robert Hanna: Thank you so much for joining us. But from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast, over and out.

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 The Legally Speaking Club over on Discord.

Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there over and out.