Recently, I wrote about announcements (here and here) from two cloud-based practice management applications, Rocket Matter and Clio, that they had added document assembly to their menus of features. When Rocket Matter made its announcement Jan. 25, co-founder Larry Port told me that it was then the only cloud-based practice management platform to integrate document [...]
Jack Newton
I am here at LegalTech in New York where I had an opportunity to meet yesterday with Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau, founders of Clio, the cloud-based practice management application. They had big news to share: Clio has raised $6 million in financing. This is the first major capital investment in any cloud-based practice management application, so it will be interesting to see where Clio goes from here.
Jack and Rian said the financing will be used to further enhance the Clio platform and add new functionality. Clio also plans to expand its marketing beyond the U.S. into other markets, including Europe, Canada and Australia.
The Series B financing was led by Acton Capital Partners, a Munich-based growth equity investor. Existing Clio investors, including Point Nine Capital, also participated in the round.
Document Assembly
Rian Gauvreau
In news of a more practical sort, Clio also announced that it now offers a document assembly function. I wrote just last week about the new document assembly feature in Rocket Matter, another cloud-based practice management platform. Now Clio customers can also upload templates for common documents and extract information from their matters and contacts to fill out the forms.
One difference with Clio’s functionality is that you can upload templates either from Microsoft Word or in PDF format. Rocket Matter requires the templates to be created in Word. This means that a WordPerfect user could create a template by typing the characters that create the merge field — Clio provides a guide for creating these fields — and then save the document as a PDF and upload it.
Now when Clio users go to their Documents tab, there is a new button, “Create.” From here, you can create a document using a previously uploaded template or start by uploading a new template.
Assembling a document from a template in Rocket Matter 2.0.
The Web-based practice management application Rocket Matter today released version 2.0 of its platform. The new version adds two notable features: document assembly and custom fields.
With this release, Rocket Matter becomes the only cloud-based practice management platform to integrate document assembly, according to Larry Port, the company’s co-founder and chief software architect.
The document assembly feature allows users to create templates for legal forms or other documents and then automatically merge client and matter data into a template to create a final document. As the user creates a document, Rocket Matter can also automatically create a billing entry.
The user creates the templates on his or her desktop, using Microsoft Word’s ability to create “merge fields.” Rocket Matter provides a guide for formatting these merge fields to work with its application. For those unfamiliar with using merge fields, Rocket Matter also provides links to guides that explain how to create and use them. As an example, to insert a client name in template, you’d use the fields: “«Client.Name»«Client.LastName»”.
Once you’ve created a template on your desktop, you upload it to Rocket Matter. As you upload it, the application checks it to ensure that you’ve properly formatted the merge fields. If there is an error, the application shows you which field contains the error. If you’ve set up all the fields properly, then the document is added to your template library, available to use for any client or matter.
Then, when you go to the dashboard for a matter within Rocket Matter, you see a new link, “Create from Template.” Click that to see a list of your available templates. Select a template and Rocket Matter automatically populates its fields with information such as party names, docket numbers, opposing counsel and the like. As it displays the final document, it shows the fields in a panel to the right. Click on any field in the panel to jump to that field in the document.
Custom Fields
With the addition of custom fields, Rocket Matter enables the user to customize these templates beyond the standard fields it already provides. Users can create an unlimited number of custom fields, both for matters and for contacts. And any custom field you create can become a merge field in a document template.
To create a custom field for a matter or contact, simply open the item. A portion of the screen is labeled “Data.” For a matter, this Data section includes the case number and county. For a contact, it includes date of birth, gender and Social Security number. Just below those data items are new horizontal columns with two headings, “Labels” and “Values.” Here is where you create a custom field. Click “add another” and simply fill in the label and value. For label, you might put “Secretary” and for value “John Jones.” You can also add custom fields when you create a new contact or matter.
As I’ve previously noted here, Rocket Matter is integrated with Dropbox, allowing you to automatically synchronize documents among Rocket Matter, your desktop and your mobile devices. More recently, the company announced its integration with Evernote. These integrations make the document assembly feature even more practical to use.
To see Rocket Matter’s Port demonstrate the new document assembly feature, view the video below.
A Preview of Rocket Matter 2.0: Document Assembly and Custom Fields from Rocket Matter on Vimeo.
The Web-based practice-management application Clio marked its third year of business Oct. 1. Today, to mark the occasion, it announced new features and unveiled a cleaner design.
The most significant changes announced today are that Clio users can now integrate their accounts with three of the leading cloud-based document management applications: NetDocuments, Dropbox and Box.net. The integration means that the documents you have in Clio’s document management system can now be synchronized with these other applications. Besides keeping your documents synchronized, this has two other advantages: it gives you access to your documents when you are offline and it provides a back-up copy of your documents.
Figure 1
To integrate with Dropbox, simply go to your settings in Clio and select the setting that authorizes Clio to access your dropbox account. As with Clio’s Google Apps integration, the connection is made using the OAuth protocol, which allows access without sharing your password. You are then asked to allow the connection between Clio and Dropbox (Figure 1). Click “allow” and Clio immediately creates a Clio folder in Dropbox and populates that folder with sub-folders for every matter you have in Clio. Once the process is done, you can view your Dropbox documents directly from within your matters on Clio. (Figure 2). As you drag and drop documents into Clio, they automatically show up in Dropbox, with no further action required.
Figure 2
Clio has also cleaned up its user interface by redesigning its pages to highlight the search bar. Needless to say, this is the trend among a number of sites — from WestlawNext to Lexis Advance — and emulates the simple design of Google. Clio has replaced its somewhat tiny search box with a larger, more prominent one (Figure 3) and eliminated some of the clutter at the top of the page. It has added a simple notifications icon that lights up red when you have unread messages.
Figure 3
Also enhanced is the search function itself. It now includes autocomplete, so that as you begin to type the name of a client or matter, a drop-down list appears of matching entries (Figure 4). That makes it a bit easier and quicker to find what you are looking for.
Figure 4
In announcing these changes, Clio provided some figures about its growth. In three years, it has grown to nearly 50 employees and its customers number “in the thousands.” It manages over 3.5 million contacts, 750,000 matters and 1.5 million documents. All tolled, customers using Clio’s time and billing features have billed $275 million.
“As a company, we’ve exploded over the past year,” Clio co-founder and CEO Jack Newton told me in an interview earlier this week. Clio will be rolling out more enhancements over the next six months, he added.
Toronto-based Credenza Software yesterday announced a new version of its Credenza practice-management software that comes at an unbeatable price — free. Now the company offers two versions of its software — Credenza Basic for free and Credenza Pro for $24.95 a month.
Both versions work within Microsoft Outlook to transform it into a practice-management tool. Credenza adds a “files” module to Outlook. You can use these files however you like to organize your work — by clients, matters, projects or whatever. The key is that, once you install Credenza, you can associate anything in Outlook with a file.
Credenza also adds features to Outlook that allow you to track time and expenses, phone calls and phone messages.
The free version includes all of Credenza’s basic functionality. What the free version lacks and what the paid version offers are:
LexisNexis last week rolled out two significant enhancements to LexisNexis Firm Manager, its Web-based practice management application. (See my earlier posts about Practice Manager here, here and here.)
The first is a new Client Center feature. It allows lawyers to share information from within Firm Manager directly with their clients or others outside the firm. The feature can be used to share documents, case calendars and other information. Nothing is shared automatically — the attorney decides what to share and who to share it with. The person you share with is given a personal, confidential password and logs in through a secure, encrypted connection.
For now, the sharing is one way, from lawyer to client. Within a month, an enhancement will be deployed that will allow clients to share documents and information with the lawyer.
The second set of enhancements are to the “contacts” feature within Firm Manager. Now, users can create relationships between contacts; add appointments, tasks or memos directly from contacts; and view these items from a new “Attached Records” section in the contacts tab. That should make it easier for a user to retrieve all the pieces of a matter, no matter where they start.
As I have noted before, I was and remain part of a 15-member advisory board that provided LexisNexis with feedback on the development of Firm Manager. I received no compensation for my participation but was reimbursed for travel to two meetings.
By the way, for a recent detailed review of Firm Manager, see Firm Offer(ing): LexisNexis Cloud-Based Practice Management Suite Arrives, by Jared Correia at the Mass. Law Office Management Assistance Program.
The public beta release last week of LexisNexis Firm Manager adds yet another choice for lawyers to use Software as a Service, or SaaS, to manage their law practices. Already offering law practice management in the cloud are such sites as Clio and Rocket Matter. Do SaaS applications make sense for lawyers? Is it ethical for lawyers to use them?
At a panel discussion recorded during LegalTech last week, I joined three other legal technology professionals to discuss the topic of law practice management via the cloud. Moderator of the panel was Tom Mighell, author of the blog Inter Alia and senior consultant at Contoural. Besides me, the other panelists were Carolyn Elefant, creator of MyShingle.com, and Andy Adkins, founder of the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Watch our video below. If you have any trouble seeing the video below, then you can play it by clicking on this link.
One of the products to be introduced this week at Legal Tech West Coast is Clio, a Web-based practice management suite designed for solo and smaller-firm lawyers. It is still in beta and pricing is not yet available, but anyone interested can sign up to participate for free in the beta testing of this software as a service. I have not yet tried it. According to an announcement, its features include:
As for security, Clio is said to use password protection with bank-grade 256-bit SSL encryption. Data is backed up daily to a secure, offsite data center, and frequent third-party audits ensure data security.
A core advantage of a SaaS such as this is that it avoids the need to purchase, install and maintain software. Pricing, of course, will be an all-important determinant of its popularity. Clio was developed by Themis Solutions Inc., Vancouver, B.C.
