Inside District Court
Miscellaneous Security
Te Cloud being what it is, lawyers have an obligation
to vet vendors particularly where privileged or confidential information is at risk. Clio offers security that is substantially more than most solos can afford.
It has outstanding virus
protection, and is certified daily. Lawyers should not have any security concerns using this product.
Administrative Permissions Cases can be assigned to specific lawyers and staff.
Permissions can be set to exclude staff access to specific cases.
Billing/Time Tracking Clio appears to have decent functionality for billing and
time tracking. I did not explore those features in any detail, however.
Smartphones Clio Mobile is used for the iPhone, iPod Touch, Google
Android phones, and the Palm Pre. I use a Windows phone, which is not supported (other than standard access through the internet, which works well enough). Te screen shots for Clio Mobile indicate that it was easy to add and view tasks, view calendar entries, and view contacts.
Reports Running a law firm is no different than running a business.
Clio’s reports are not nearly as robust as they should be. Tey are geared mostly toward billing and financial transactions. Te Reports cannot be used to create lists of cases by date, lists of upcoming statutes of limitation or other data that a law firm would want to know. Tis is an important area for Clio to improve. A quick fix is to input the statutes of limitation as tasks.
Give them all the same Description name (like SOL). Ten, in your Task tab you can sort by description, and you have a list that you can convert to PDF or Excel (in Excel you can delete the irrelevant tasks).
Aesthetics Te interface is intuitive, and doesn’t require much in
the way of training. Clio has a easily searchable help topics, and the system is simple to learn on your own. It uses tabs for most features (Calendar, Matters, Tasks, etc…), and sub- tabs for each Matter. Te right-hand side features calendar for the current month, the day’s agenda, and recently accessed matters and contacts, which serve as good shortcuts. Overall, the interface is better than many other (more expensive) case management programs.
Conclusion Clio is one of the most of the most inexpensive case
management products on the market, and it is easily
affordable for most solos and small firms. Extremely tech- savvy lawyers might not appreciate it as much, particularly because of impaired functionality for document creation and reporting. For others who need a simple program, or are new to case management software, it will do the trick. To see how Clio compares to its competitors, Rocket and HoudiniEsq,6
Matter5 CaseManagementProfiles.
Biography John J. Cord ( John Cord Law, LLC) graduated from
the University of Colorado School of Law. He concentrates his practice on automobile negligence, medical malpractice and workers' compensation.
He provides a wide range
of technological services to law firms, including blogging and trial presentation. Find his firm on Facebook at www.
facebook.com/CharmCityLaw, and follow him on Twitter at @CharmCityLawyer
5
http://www.rocketmatter.com/ 6
http://houdiniesq.com/
Trial Reporter / Summer 2012 55
go to
www.charmcitylawyer.com/
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