Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Nate Law here ready to talk to you today about eight things that I love about using Clio. As you're watching, don't forget to like and subscribe to the video. I really appreciate it. Let's dive into number one. So number one is something that I've actually used as a trial lawyer and that is the mail drop address that you can use in Clio. Here's what I mean. So when you're in your client matter and you go to the communications tab and then you go over to the right-hand side where it says new, several options will pop up but the second from the bottom is the copy matter mail drop address. You copy that and it goes to your clipboard. Then when you go into your email, you just copy that into your blank carbon copy or VCC on the email that you're sending and it automatically uploads it to the communications tab in Clio. Then you're done. There's no more filing you got to do. It's already there for you and your staff at your firm to reference when you need it. If you forget to do that when you're sending the email, sometimes I just do the same process but then forward it to myself essentially but just forward it to that mail drop address in Clio and then it saves it that way in the communications tab. The next thing I really love about Clio is all of the various app integrations. These are so great for solo and small firms. One, because Clio integrates well with Google, Dropbox, Box, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, a lot of Microsoft products. So whether you're a solo starting out and maybe you're using G Suite, you're using different things like that on the Google side or if you're small to medium-sized firm and maybe you've kind of gone towards using more Microsoft related products or just other products that are a little bit larger in scale, it integrates really well. So everything I'm talking about today relates to actual things that I use as a trial lawyer in Clio and these are also things that are just in Clio Manage. So they're in the basic form of Clio. They're not necessarily in the kind of higher form of Clio Grow which has probably infinite number of ways to manage integrations with other apps and client intake flow and things like that. But today I'm just going to stick to these basics in Clio Manage that'll apply to everyone. So for me I use a lot of the Microsoft products like Teams, Outlook, of course all the Word and all of that kind of suite of products. But in Outlook they have really good apps for integrating ways of saving your emails or even saving all the attachments from an email into your Box folder that you set up for your client. And that's an invaluable way to save time and effort instead of individually dragging and dropping or, you know, saving to your desktop and then uploading it into, you know, Box or something ridiculous like that. You can simply add this add-in for Box to your Outlook and it works with Clio as well. And that way you can get everything either into Clio or to Box and there's some really good integration for that. Number three thing that I most love about Clio is probably just the ease of doing billing entries. As a trial lawyer I'm constantly on the go and so if I'm in court most of the time I will have my laptop up and I'll, you know, be able to put time down on my laptop remotely and that's really helpful. But a lot of programs have that, not just Clio. Clio is especially good in terms of ease of use for getting time and billing and activity entries from your phone. It's extremely easy. The mobile app is just the most easy to use and it helps save you time and gets the accuracy of your activity down for your billing. And so you don't have to do a bunch of steps on the back end to correct things or make additions when you're out on the go, especially if you're in trial in court a lot. The fourth thing I love about Clio goes right to the money aspect. So number four for me is that Clio forces you to be timely with your bills. It's almost annoyingly so. It's like, it's like the whole program is designed to make sure that you don't have any outstanding bills whatsoever and if you do it's almost like Clio sets these reminders right in your face to say, hey how can you have all these outstanding bills. It was a shock for me going from that to that rather from some other programs and ways of doing things because some other types of tools that I use just weren't as, just weren't as forward with that. But Clio really acknowledges the importance of getting your bills not only sent timely but received timely as well. And that's a really good thing to use particularly if you're a solo or small firm owner because you don't have a lot of natural accountability and you might not have a whole accounting department or you know one one separate person doing your accounting for you. Even if you have a bookkeeper or something like that they're usually not involved in the kind of nitty-gritty of making sure you're staying on top of the most important thing which is communicating with clients about their bills and just having that that honest conversation. So Clio really does a good job of putting that kind of in your face at the forefront as a main part of your business practice. The next thing I love about Clio is how easy it makes it to work as a team with the other members of your law firm. In terms of all firm access and all your people being able to access the same information on a timely updated manner nobody does it better than Clio. For me this is especially important because sometimes we have situations where we're double booked or we're not sure if we can adequately you know manage multiple courtrooms you know at one day if certain judges you know just take a long time. And so when we need coverage for hearings for instance I can have all my memos in that client folder. I don't even have to have a conference or separate email or other things with between me and the other attorney. I can just say hey you'll find all the notes and everything you need in the client folder in the notes section of the matter and they're good to go. We don't have to spend a lot of extra time trying to coordinate around things that are already kind of a time crunch for us and so that saves us a lot of time. It helps us work effectively and efficiently as a team and that's one of the great things about Clio that I really love especially in kind of a trial practice setting. Number six is accessible customer service. Now that's a pretty big pretty big endorsement for a software company of any kind but Clio does it really really well. I remember one call that I had with them several months into starting Clio. I was trying to describe a process that we had in our old system that just did not match up or make sense with Clio at all. I was frustrated. I could tell even they were a little bit dumbfounded by what I was trying to get at. What I was impressed by was actually not that they just had the answer right away or fixed my problem right away but what I was impressed by was the individual, the way they asked me questions was very, showed a lot of critical thinking and it really got to the heart of what I was doing. So they asked about what the goal I was trying to reach really was, what the end result would kind of really look like and that was something that got past the logjam and they were actually able to help me at that point. So just having people on the other side on that kind of techie side that are people smart enough to ask those kind of questions is really what has helped us as a firm utilize this program to the best of you know of our ability and you know just for everything that it is able to offer. So their customer service aspect is a really big deal and a really big plus for this program. All right and number seven is customizable task lists. I know this topic doesn't sound all that sexy but it goes to systems and systems as we know are extremely important for being able to scale a business of any kind but especially a law firm and they're especially important for being able to make sure you hit deadlines and make sure that you've checked all your boxes and that everything that a client needs from you has been done. It's also a way to make sure that you are effectively managing your staff. One thing that I would recommend doing early for creating a customizable task list is to create certain task lists for things that you know are going to be needed in every single particular type of case that you do. And this can be as specific or as general as it needs to be and over time you'll get better at using it but you can have those ready to make so that you can just plug in when you're creating the client matter from the very beginning and so it's worth the time in the beginning to work through that a little bit. I think the harder thing is not related to necessarily Clio but just getting your staff or team members or virtual assistant to buy into that process and say hey this is how I'm going to manage you or this is how we're going to manage the projects that are within this matter for this client and having that as your one go-to spot to really kind of manage the whole process. That's usually the harder part. The easier part is already kind of provided by Clio and that is you can assign certain tasks to certain people and you can automate that to a large degree and then it's easy for you to check back in and it's easy for other people who might be working on the case too to make sure you're not doing double work or to make sure that you're not just totally leaving something out and missing a step or missing an important deadline. An additional bonus is when you're onboarding a new attorney for instance or a new staff person you can use those customizable tasks lists as a training opportunity to well to get their buy-in for that process that you have that system that you've put in place but also to say here's how we do our cases here's how we run through a case and it gives them a good initial picture of what you want them to be shooting for so it kind of helps you manage from an early early time or early standpoint helps manage their key performance indicators even just from the very beginning. Number eight is basic but important on a very human level for me. Number eight is text message reminders to clients. This seems like such a basic thing but it kind of goes to one of the ways that I think lawyers need to in general just be more in tune with our clients and how clients operate. I'll give you an example personally when I go to a dentist doctor or some of their professional appointment I almost always get one to two to three text message reminders or email reminders that are automated but they have all the info there I need and it's a helpful way for me as a busy professional to remember okay yep I've got this important appointment coming up so I don't miss it. It also helps them because it makes it more likely I'm not going to forget the appointment or cancel or have to reschedule it and isn't that really important for us as lawyers as well to make sure that we're not wasting their time but not ours either. So that's one thing that you can do in Clio you can set each matter for each individual client to be enabled for text messaging. The client gets to choose whether or not to accept that so if they don't want to pay for extra text message you know fees or something like that they don't have to so it might not necessarily be something that the client wants but you give them that option and for me it's made clients so much more aware especially if it's just a you know a phone meeting or something but it's also made a difference for a court because we can put any information we want to in reminder when we're scheduling appointment for instance or a court hearing and then the client gets that info too. So you have to be careful about what you put in there you want it to be professional you want it to be correct and helpful but you want all of that for yourself anyway so pretty easy when you're creating an appointment or court date or something like that in a matter and then it goes directly to your client as well and it actually gives you a confirmation of whether or not they've received it and accepted it or if they've responded kind of with a okay got it or yes or no kind of response as well. So these are just eight of the main benefits or things I really have enjoyed using Clio for and really appreciate and I would also really appreciate if you like and subscribe this video stay tuned for more information about how to run a law firm effectively and productively I look forward to seeing you then thanks bye