Head of Product at Clio Talks What is Now and What is on the Horizon
- 23 February, 2024
- 43.7 MB
Let’s dive into tech! This week, Bob welcomes Hemant Kashyap, Chief Product Officer of Clio, the leading case management platform for attorneys. Hemant explains his role and shares Clio’s mission, unveiling how its ecosystem of integrated apps is changing legal practice. He introduces Clio Duo, an AI-powered assistant automating tasks, alerting users to deadlines, and aiding in document review and drafting. Bob and Hemant explore Clio’s solutions, including Clio File for e-filing, payments, FinTech offerings, and Clio Grow, a marketing tool for law firms. Listen now to hear how Clio enhances the legal experience—efficient, connected, and accessible for legal professionals everywhere.
Hemant Kashyap, Clio
Transcript
Bob Simon (00:08):
All right, welcome to this episode of the Justice Team Podcast on the Justice Team Network, and today we’re going to talk tech, we’re going to talk some AI tech, some stuff that’s on the horizon, things that are already here. And we’re very honored to have the chief product officer of Clio, a CPO. So, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Hemant Kashyap (00:27):
Hi, Bob. Great to be here. I’m Hemant Kashyap, and as you said, I’m the chief product officer of Clio.
Bob Simon (00:33):
First of all, what is a chief product officer?
Hemant Kashyap (00:35):
Good question. So, I’m responsible for the overall vision and the strategy and the roadmaps for all of our products, our entire product suite, both in terms of what’s going to be coming out over the next year, the next three years, the next five years, and all the underlying strategy behind it. How do we help our customers is a big piece of it, so a deep, deep understanding of our customers, and then of course the market landscape, what the competition is doing, all of that.
Bob Simon (01:06):
Wow, so for those of you that are listening or watching and don’t know, Clio is likely the largest case management platform for attorneys. Would you say it’s the largest?
Hemant Kashyap (01:14):
It is, yep.
Bob Simon (01:15):
It is, emphatically.
Hemant Kashyap (01:17):
Emphatically, yes. By any measure, we are the largest.
Bob Simon (01:20):
And what do you define the largest as, the amount of people on it?
Hemant Kashyap (01:24):
A lot of people. We have over 150,000 legal professionals worldwide that are on the platform in 70 countries or so, and the most number of five star reviews on any of the major review sites. We have over 250 applications that are integrated into Clio through our app ecosystem.
Bob Simon (01:46):
That’s my favorite part. And we do a lot of talks on these, and the thing I love most about Clio, well, a lot of things is the ecosystem for the apps, how you guys not only promote your other partners because one of our companies included, but making it easy to integrate.
Hemant Kashyap (02:02):
We’re really proud of that-
Bob Simon (02:03):
Should we thank you for that?
Hemant Kashyap (02:04):
Not me personally, but certainly the company. A lot of this precedes my time at Clio also, but that’s something that I’m excited about, we’ve always been excited about, and we put our money where our mouth is. We invest in that to foster that ecosystem.
Bob Simon (02:22):
And so, how many employees does Clio have approximately?
Hemant Kashyap (02:26):
We have nearly 1,000 employees.
Bob Simon (02:28):
Wow.
Hemant Kashyap (02:28):
It’s growing really fast.
Bob Simon (02:30):
Wow, and all over the world?
Hemant Kashyap (02:33):
Mostly in Canada, in the US, in Ireland, and in Australia, but we’re hiring all over the place.
Bob Simon (02:43):
And while the time we’re recording is different from when we release, but I know your CEO founder is actually in Australia right now with your team.
Hemant Kashyap (02:49):
He is Jack Newton, our CEO, and our COO Ronnie, were both in Australia to officially launch Clio in Australia and was really great.
Bob Simon (03:00):
Did you ask him if the toilet water actually does flush counterclockwise?
Hemant Kashyap (03:05):
I did not, but that is my understanding. And I have been to the Southern Hemisphere myself and I have witnessed that.
Bob Simon (03:10):
All right, so let’s go into… So one of the products… I went to ClioCon this year and I go every year, you guys were talking a lot about the future with AI and things like this, and the product that I am personally most excited about is Clio Duo, and I want you to explain for our listeners what it is and just how I think of it as a trial lawyer, have you ever watch a show Loki? Do you know this show?
Hemant Kashyap (03:33):
Not yet, it’s on my list of shows to watch.
Bob Simon (03:36):
But they have an AI bot called Miss Minutes and Miss Minutes can do anything you want and it goes a little rogue at the end and evil, but I like to think of Miss Minutes is Clio Duo that can accomplish any task for you within your ecosystem.
Hemant Kashyap (03:50):
That’s the vision, without the evil part.
Bob Simon (03:53):
Yet.
Hemant Kashyap (03:55):
But it is your AI-powered assistant and it’s your dynamic partner, the dynamic duo, that helps you really focus on the things you need to be focused on, helps automate tasks for you, and it’s a combination of both predictive AI and generative AI.
Bob Simon (04:15):
So, explain for us what the vision is that you’re building. Clio and your case management system, cloud-based warehouse where all of our documents live, workflows, so what are some things that you think Clio do is going to be able to accomplish to make our lawyers and staff lives a lot easier?
Hemant Kashyap (04:32):
So as I mentioned, it’ll automate many of the tasks for you. It’ll alert you to things that you should be focused on, deadlines that are coming up, documents that need your review. It’ll summarize documents for you. It’ll help you draft simple documents for you like letters and NDAs and things like that. It will review the documents for you and alert you to things that are not in compliance. It’ll help you more with the product and give you assistance where you need, if you’re trying to figure out what are some of the things you want to do with your product, and it will help you be a better business owner by surfacing business insights, giving you reporting and helping you really understand how your businesses is performing.
Bob Simon (05:21):
So, it could be something like at the end of each week, it could tell you how… I know you guys do with something with Google and LSAs, it could say how those are performing this week, or I saw one where it was draft all the ledgers of invoices or bills that we owe and let me know how much is out… That’s crazy.
Hemant Kashyap (05:39):
It’s really smart and it’s getting smarter, so absolutely, it’ll give you reports at the end of the week, month, or a quarter, whatever it is on different aspects of the business, and it’ll alert you to unbilled hours that are out there and prompt you. And if you say, “Yeah,” it’ll automatically generate those bills for you and send them out.
Bob Simon (06:02):
And I know with the new Clio PI suite, which we were privileged enough at our firm to have some input into, and I do love it, I can foresee it saying something like, “Hey, this case settled three weeks ago. Would you like me to start the distribution to pay funds?” That kind of stuff, right?
Hemant Kashyap (06:19):
Absolutely.
Bob Simon (06:20):
Crazy.
Hemant Kashyap (06:22):
We intend to bring our AI platform to every product that we have, including our payments and FinTech products, and that includes disbursement of funds and things like that.
Bob Simon (06:32):
When you talk about that ecosystem of the apps, will it be sophisticated enough to say, for instance, “Would you like to have your demand letter auto drafted by EvenUp? Would you like me to assist you with that?”
Hemant Kashyap (06:46):
Yeah.
Bob Simon (06:46):
That’s crazy.
Hemant Kashyap (06:48):
We already have that integration with EvenUp-
Bob Simon (06:50):
I know it’s in the integration.
Hemant Kashyap (06:51):
And in fact we’re an investor as you know in EvenUp through Clio Ventures and we’re really excited about that, and that is absolutely part of it.
Bob Simon (06:59):
Because this is always what I dreamed of to have, well, the Miss Minutes, Clio Duo, be able to not only do every task that you ask it to do, but think about things that can make you more efficient.
Hemant Kashyap (07:10):
And if our own LLMs and our own AI platforms don’t solve it, then we intend to integrate with the different point solutions out there in the AI space, so that everything is in one place for you.
Bob Simon (07:22):
Wow, Clio is just the big data warehouse, it makes you be super efficient as a law firm?
Hemant Kashyap (07:29):
Yeah.
Bob Simon (07:29):
Super duper efficient?
Hemant Kashyap (07:31):
Absolutely, and we believe we have the right to win here as the LPM of record. All the data is in our system. We have a relationship with our customers and they really trust us. There’s a lot of noise out there right now about AI and hallucinations and can you trust it and things like that, and so the position we’re taking is we are going to solve all those things for you, and when we bring you any AI-based solution, you can truly trust it.
Bob Simon (07:57):
That’s important because we do a lot of AI and ethics talks, and I always tell people, “You have to be able to vet the products that you have.” A lot of times lawyers don’t have the know or wherewithal just like, “Hey, somebody sent me an email, says they can automate X, Y, Z,” but a lot of times they’re just white-labeling ChatGPT, these types of things. And I always tell them, be a mentor, find somebody that can answer those questions but you can ask them, are they like SOC 2 compliant, right?
Hemant Kashyap (08:21):
Yeah.
Bob Simon (08:22):
So kind of talk to us, what are lawyers… Ideally if we had Clio, where they’re system vetting these AI products for you as the gold standard, but what are some follow-up questions they can ask to say, “Is that AI real or not, or am I just being hoodwinked?”
Hemant Kashyap (08:37):
You absolutely should do your research into these different companies. As you said, many of them are just thin wrappers or ChatGPT or one of the other LLM products out there. And so the question is, what kind of data do they have access to, is a big piece of it. We have a lot of data and we train our models on our data, not just the public internet, and it’s our customers’ own data-
Bob Simon (09:02):
So, who owns the data, the customer?
Hemant Kashyap (09:03):
It’s absolutely the customer owns the data.
Bob Simon (09:05):
Wow. This weekend I was talking to some buddies about… We were in Silicon Valley last week, and I had some ideas of, hey, everybody asks me for advice on how should I pick this jury or answer these questions or what’s your trial themes or how should I take this deposition, so imagine a world where I have all of my stuff in Clio, my depositions, my trial transcripts, I can dump in every media I’ve ever done, could I ask Clio Duo to act like me and answer this question?
Hemant Kashyap (09:35):
At some point down the road. That’s why it’s meant to be your assistant, and at least the simple tasks, it can certainly do that. The whole idea here is for our customers to be able to practice their craft and practice law and-
Bob Simon (09:50):
And automate the other stuff.
Hemant Kashyap (09:52):
… And work on the business, not in the business, and so that’s the whole idea.
Bob Simon (09:57):
Wait, what’d you say? What’s that tagline?
Hemant Kashyap (09:59):
Work on their business, not work in their business.
Bob Simon (10:02):
Did you guys trademark that? It’s pretty good. You’re CPO now of Clio. So, where did you come from? Where did you grow up?
Hemant Kashyap (10:12):
I’ve been in tech my entire professional career. I started off as a software engineer back in the day and then went off and did management consulting for a few years. I had my own startup and we did that for a number of years. And then I’ve been in senior leadership roles at a number of technology companies. Right before Clio, I was at another market leading vertical SaaS company in the trades called ServiceTitan, and so a lot of experience in this space, how to build software for different industries that are end to end, that’s kind of like the ERP and the CRM of that.
Bob Simon (10:52):
Some other products that Clio has is the app for clients, it’s both in English and Spanish, so that a client has access to their lawyer, everything tracked. So tell us, if we had to pick the top five most exciting products that either exist today or are on the roadmap in the very near future, and we’ve already talked about two, so I’m going to eliminate those, Clio Duo and the PI suite, what else do you guys have coming out?
Hemant Kashyap (11:16):
Clio File and-
Bob Simon (11:18):
Clio File?
Hemant Kashyap (11:18):
Yeah, so that’s our e-filing product that helps our customers file documents for the courts. That’s a big pain point. When you just think about the overall workflows related to how our customers deal with the courts, it’s very archaic and it’s painful, and so they ask us to help them with that. So we started off by, first we have calendar rules or court rules that helps you keep track of all your dates, key dates for the courts, and what is due when. Then we have Lawyaw, which is our document automation-
Bob Simon (11:51):
I love Lawyaw, that was a acquisition by Clio.
Hemant Kashyap (11:54):
And it has all the court forms in it that are fully automated and that’ll automatically fill out the court forms for you. And then now we are solving the last mile problem, which is actually submitting it to the courts.
Bob Simon (12:06):
Because I know Clio does a lot of work actually with the courts, actually with the judiciary system, with leadership. I was at a couple of dinners with you with actual leadership in the court system.
Hemant Kashyap (12:16):
Yeah, and we actually took a tour of the LA Superior Court that day and that was really great, and we met with the clerk of the court and try to understand what challenges they have and how we can help them out.
Bob Simon (12:28):
So on Clio, correct me if I’m wrong, so you have all of your court filing documents could be all automated through Lawyaw, all the stuff’s there. Your deadline’s going to be told to you by Clio Duo, which could then maybe auto generate do that for you, and then you could even ask your AI assistant to then do the filing as well through Clio.
Hemant Kashyap (12:46):
Yeah.
Bob Simon (12:46):
Oh my God.
Hemant Kashyap (12:54):
That’s the end to it, and so we’re solving that last mile problem. So, Clio File is really exciting for us. The other area is payments and FinTech in general, and there’s a lot of exciting stuff. We’re continuously bringing out new ways for our customers to accept payments because that is a big pain point.
Bob Simon (13:08):
Big pain point.
Hemant Kashyap (13:09):
And so, we’re always asking, how can we help them get paid faster? Well, first of all, billing the right amount at the right time, and then how do we help them get paid faster? And so we just launched tap-to-pay, which basically makes their phone [inaudible 00:13:25]-
Bob Simon (13:26):
I saw it. It was awesome.
Hemant Kashyap (13:26):
So, that’s digital wallets with Google Pay and Apple Pay, and then also your phone can now be a terminal where you can just tap the card and take payment.
Bob Simon (13:34):
And that’s where in the PI world is you now have the ability to do payments from your client trust account or everything tracked, and then when a case gets dispersed to do the same.
Hemant Kashyap (13:44):
And you don’t need any kind of dongle or Bluetooth card reader or anything like that, the phone is the terminal.
Bob Simon (13:50):
Wow, it’s a mobile world.
Hemant Kashyap (13:52):
It is, and we’re continuously improving the payments product, so that’s really exciting.
Bob Simon (14:00):
And I know with our product, Attorney Share, the vision is we’ve been up in Vancouver, whiteboarding stuff with you all is we have a case comes in, goes directly find the best lawyer for that case, protects your referral fee, your partnership fee, we’ll be able to track status through Clio now directly through the platform, never even leave your case management system, but then now working on the back end where after the case resolves, everyone’s notified and then Clio can then pay.
Hemant Kashyap (14:23):
Exactly.
Bob Simon (14:23):
See, that’s the one.
Hemant Kashyap (14:26):
We’re really excited about the integration with Attorney Share and it is a big pain point that we’re helping to solve and facilitate those kinds of relationships and transactions.
Bob Simon (14:39):
And I know Clio’s big into access to justice, which I see our vehicle being the same piece because I know other than doing the PI suite, you also guys have been big into access to justice and those legal aid centers.
Hemant Kashyap (14:52):
Yeah, we just launched that, we’re really proud of it, and that’s another area where we are investing to help these legal aid firms around the country. And there the big problem is the grants and tracking the grants, how you’re drawing down on the grants and making sure, and also helping them with the intake process. So when potential clients come in, do they qualify? And then do we have funding left in the grant to be able to serve these clients?
Bob Simon (15:23):
Wow.
Hemant Kashyap (15:23):
And so, we built out specific features to help these legal aid organizations for that.
Bob Simon (15:29):
And I think that’s the thing that I’ve noticed the most about your leadership is just the willingness to give white glove service help just to solve any problem.
Hemant Kashyap (15:39):
And I see that on the inside, too. We do a lot of things that it’s not going to make a lot of money for us or it’s not a big opportunity, but it helps further the mission, which is really important for us.
Bob Simon (15:50):
Wow, so was there one more that we wanted to talk about or two. I forget, I’m bad at counting.
Hemant Kashyap (15:57):
Well Grow-
Bob Simon (15:58):
I can do anything by 40% though.
Hemant Kashyap (16:02):
Grow is another area that we’re really excited about. Right now it’s really strong on intake. We’ve just rolled out a bunch of features related to workflow automation and intake automation for our customers, but we’re also evolving Grow into a full-fledged marketing platform and really excited.
Bob Simon (16:20):
See, that’s what excites me because right now what I log into my Clio Grow and I can see month to month where all of our referrals coming through, what the percentage of those ones that are signed, because everything goes directly into Clio Grow, and then we’ve pushed to Clio Manage, one thing that I would like to see, because I know in Clio Manage, we have the ability to text or follow up with clients, I would love to see on the roadmap to be able to do that from Clio Grow because when we have intake, sometimes we’re deciding whether or not to take the case and I’d still like to be able to save those correspondence. So, how are you building out Clio Grow? Because I’m excited about that. Actually, I want to know, so I’m just going to ask you a question.
Hemant Kashyap (16:55):
It is on the roadmap.
Bob Simon (16:56):
Good.
Hemant Kashyap (16:57):
And we recognize that that’s something we need to have, but you’ll be able to do omnichannel, multichannel communication. It’s all going to be there in the audit trail, and you’ll know exactly what the communication looked like, whether you’re in Grow or Manage you’ll be able to see it. And then all the whole attribution of the actual revenue and the billing back to the different lead sources, all of that.
Bob Simon (17:23):
Because we can track the lead sources through Clio Grow to see what’s working, what’s not, and RA1’s always attorney referrals because you always think we’d like to get referred stuff in our niche, which I think most people should. And then we push through Clio Grow to through Manage to Attorney Share the things we’re not great at or outside of our jurisdiction to monetize that fee, but I see Clio Grow, and correct me if I’m wrong, it’s like the marketing CRM where all of your clients are stored, whether clients or contacts or other things, and then are you envisioning the ability to then do SMS campaigns through all of the contacts that you have in there?
Hemant Kashyap (17:59):
SMS campaigns, email campaigns, direct mail campaigns if you want to send out postcards or door hangers or whatever it is.
Bob Simon (18:08):
Oh my God.
Hemant Kashyap (18:08):
With full tracking, so you can track your OAS and your ROI and all of that, and also continuously adding new lead channels to the platform. So, we just launched Google LSA, that’s a big one. We’re going to have-
Bob Simon (18:24):
We just started those actually. We went through Clio and started LSAs I think about two weeks ago, very excited about it.
Hemant Kashyap (18:29):
Some of the early results that we’re hearing, and also anecdotally, what we’re seeing is incredible.
Bob Simon (18:36):
We actually had to staff up more because of the intake problems with some many coming in.
Hemant Kashyap (18:41):
That’s great.
Bob Simon (18:42):
But I see everything goes into Clio Grow, which is your marketing thing, and again, I’m so excited about Clio Duo. Would there be the ability to have your AI-powered assistant to ask them, hey, can we send an SMS to all prior clients for a Google review or can we send them all a Christmas card?
Hemant Kashyap (19:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
Bob Simon (19:04):
Oh my God.
Hemant Kashyap (19:05):
So, we call that reputation management, so the solicitation of the reviews and managing your online presence, so we are investing in that also. And the power of generative AI is it’ll create a lot of the content for you, so whether it’s your email copy, your SMS copy, whatever it is, our vision is for Duo to help you with all of those things.
Bob Simon (19:32):
That’s fantastic, so what’s the best way for listeners or viewers to be able to reach you, your team? What’s the best-
Hemant Kashyap (19:41):
Clio.com.
Bob Simon (19:41):
Clio.com.
Hemant Kashyap (19:43):
Yeah, it’s easy, and there are parts of the website where you can go to, and that’s the best way to reach out to us. Of course, for our customers, they can always reach out to their CSMs, their customer success managers, and that’s also a great way to reach out.
Bob Simon (20:00):
In any of the Justice HQ members, Clio is a preferred vendor on our platform, so we do offer discounts. Any listeners to the show, we could probably offer you the same, just hit us up, go to Justice Team Network and just ping us through there and we’ll be able to help you out. So, anything else on the roadmap that you’re excited about as we wind down this show?
Hemant Kashyap (20:18):
Just that we have a very healthy sized R&D org, and so we have the ability to really drive innovation at a high velocity for the industry. And so, we’re investing in almost every area of the product, whether it’s AI, whether it’s our core managed product, flagship product with all these practice area add-ons, whether it’s Grow and making it an into full-fledged marketing platform. So, it’s just everyone can expect to see wave after wave of innovative new products from Clio.
Bob Simon (20:54):
I do love it and I love the product, and I just like the leadership team, and I think for our listeners and viewers out there, just to sum up how helpful that they are is I’ve literally put Clio’s management team in touch with other legal founder products that I’ve been a big fan of or that we’ve test drove, and I say, “Can you guys make it so that they’re integrated with your platform?” Because it’d make my life a lot easier through workflows, so I know Whippy, EsquireTek, there’s a few other ones like Case Clinical, all these ones that we’ve put through and they’ve done it, they’ve made the integrations for us, so it makes it a lot easier for us to operate because sometimes it’s hard to make law firms and lawyers change the way they do things, but if you make it easier for them it’s-
Hemant Kashyap (21:37):
And we really appreciate it. We really are grateful for your partnership and appreciate all these companies that you’re bringing to us.
Bob Simon (21:46):
Cool. Well, if you have any questions, go to clio.com. You can click the button on Justice Team Network, if you have any other further questions, be able to guide you to the right place, but it’s a pleasure having you on, and we’re filming this now in late November 2023, and I’m just interested, I think we’ll do this talk in about six months and see how things have evolved because every new week there’s something different coming out.
Hemant Kashyap (22:09):
We love it. We love to build, we love to solve problems for our customers, and really transform the legal experience for all. It’s not just a catchphrase, it’s real.
Bob Simon (22:18):
So, hopefully maybe we can do with this whole episode on Synthesia where we’ll replicate ourselves and just have the talking avatars.
Hemant Kashyap (22:25):
Sounds good.
Bob Simon (22:27):
All right, thank you. Take care.
Hemant Kashyap (22:28):
Thanks.
