Monday marks the start of the 12th Clio Cloud Conference, and as the company that produces it, Clio, continues to grow and expand, so too does the conference, with its largest-ever number of attendees and its move from a single host hotel to the Austin, Texas, convention center with attendees spread across a number of nearby hotels.
With 2,600 people attending in person and 2,000 attending virtually, the 4,600 registrations represent a 20-fold increase over the 230 people who attended the very first ClioCon in 2013. (And, yes, I was there.)
(If you have been on the fence about registering, there is a discount code at the end of this post.)
Major Focus on AI
At the conference, expect a lot of time and energy to be spent talking about generative AI, Clio CEO and founder Jack Newton told me during an advance briefing earlier today.
As we near the second anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT, AI has brought us to an important moment in legal tech, Newton said, and, reflective of that, Clio will be making exciting announcements at the conference about AI, he said, as will many of the 83 partner companies that will be exhibiting there (also a record number).
“We’ve learned a lot over the last year and we’ve seen a technology adoption cycle and a learning cycle that typically takes a decade-plus happen inside of a year with AI, which has been really exciting to see,” Newton said. “It’s certainly the zeitgeist in legal tech, and we’ll be spending a lot of time and energy at ClioCon talking about AI.”
At ClioCon last year, the company announced its plans to launch Clio Duo, a proprietary generative AI that will be built natively into all Clio products. Although Clio has not yet confirmed whether that launch will be announced on Monday, it is likely to be the case.
Newton said that the combination of AI within Clio’s own products and the AI features coming from its integration partners could unlock “exponential value” for legal professionals and amplify the power of a unified practice management platform.
“We’ll have a number of exciting announcements on that front to share on the keynote stage on Monday, and then we have a large number of integration partners that are bringing really unique and powerful AI capabilities to the table in Clio as well,” he said.
For the first time, the conference will include an “AI lounge,” where attendees will be able to sit down with AI experts and learn about the capabilities of AI within Clio.
‘Huge Sense of Momentum’
The theme of this year’s conference is “momentum,” and Newton said that is appropriate given the accelerating adoption curve around AI and the fact that lawyers are actually beginning to integrate AI into their daily workflows.
He said that this year’s Legal Trends Report, which will be released at the conference, will include noteworthy findings that show how aggressively lawyers are adopting AI.
The report will show that the benefits of AI for lawyers compound and have a flywheel effect, building momentum, reducing the friction lawyers experience in their own internal workflows, and reducing the friction that clients experience in working with them.
“One of our goals with ClioCon this year is going to be leaving every attendee feeling like they’re leaving this conference with a huge sense of energy, a huge sense of momentum, a huge amount of optimism around their ability to move forward and transform the way they practice law, transform the way they deliver legal services to their clients.”
Tracks for Different Firms
In July, Clio announced a record-setting raise of $900 million, the largest ever for a legal tech company, and said at the time that the round would, among other things, enable it to accelerate its expansion into more mid-sized firms. Already, it counts more than 1,000 mid-sized firms in the U.S. alone as customers.
That expansion of its market will be reflected in the programming at next week’s conference, which will include a track for mid-sized firms, along with tracks for solo and small firms.
Newton calls them “birds of a feather” tracks, where firms that share common interests will be able to come together, share ideas, network, and learn from one another.
As Clio expands into the larger-firm market and also adds modules for more specialized areas of practice, such as its module for personal injury lawyers, that has led the company to evolve how it thinks about delivering program and creating community at ClioCon, Newton said.
“I think all attendees share a passion for innovation, a passion for thinking creatively about how they can evolve their practice, thinking creatively about how the future of law looks,” Newton said. “But then we see attendees increasingly leveraging some specialized capabilities in Clio, … and they can learn a lot from each other if we put them in a room with one another.”
A Larger Venue
Until this year, ClioCon has always been held within a single hotel venue, such as for the last two years, when it was at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville.
But with the growth in the conference’s attendance, this year it will be held in a conference center. That means that the attendees will not all be in the same hotel, and everyone will have to leave their hotel to attend programs.
When I asked Newton if he was at all concerned that this would have a detrimental impact on the sense of community that has characterized past conferences, he said that he believes the conference will still have the same sense of community and place.
“This is in the good-problem-to-have category,’ he said, in that the conference’s success has caused it to outgrow the capacity of most hotel venues.
He is confident that the sense of community will carry through and said ClioCon’s planners have been very deliberate about how to maintain that sense of space and community.
It even makes the conference more inclusive, he said, in that attendees have choices of hotels and price points.
‘Summit on AI’
In a year in which abuse and harassment issues have been raised in connection with legal tech conferences, I asked Newton what Clio is doing to safeguard attendees.
Although there has never been an incident at a ClioCon, he said, the conference has a zero-tolerance policy prohibiting abuse or harassment, and every attendee and vendor is required to agree to it.
“We feel thankful that we’ve never seen a problem like that in the 12 years we’ve been doing ClioCon, and intend to keep it that way through a very clear code of conduct and a very swift course of action we’ll take if we do see any misbehavior on that front.”
With AI, Newton said, the legal profession is going through an “explosive cycle of innovation,” similar to the early days of the internet, where people are discovering the art of the possible.
“Now we’re seeing in 2024, I think, an opportunity to reflect on some of the advances we’ve made, some of the missteps we’ve had, and start to really chart a course for what the next five years will look like with AI.
“I’m really looking at the conference as almost a summit around AI and the future of legal, and a rare opportunity to get so many thought leaders in one room.”
By the way, if you want to be among those in that room, there is still time to register, and if you use this discount code, you can get 48% off the registration price.
Register here and use the code FOMO.
I hope to see you there.