JackNewtonClioCEO

Geoff Hinton made a point that we're very close to realizing the algorithmic potential of current machine learning capabilities. When it comes to negotiating contracts, there's a level of nuance required that machines just can't provide.

We'll get to a point where we'll have easily automated tasks being done by computers, and the leading edge of consumer machine learning capabilities will get pulled into the practice of law, but you'll never be able to fully remove lawyers from the legal process.

Great question! Trying to raise our first fundraising round was incredibly difficult and very disheartening. We launched in 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis and despite having what I was convinced was a great business, and receiving great feedback from investors there was no one writing cheques.

We got a cold email from a German investor named Christoph Janz who had heard about our product on a blog and expressing interest in being an angel investor—but the email was caught by our spam filter and sat there for two weeks (inadvertently slow-playing him.) Through what I can only describe as an act of God, Rian, my Co-founder, randomly checked the spam folder and saw the email, leading to a $1m Series A.

Moral of the story: always check the spam folder!

I remember that meetup! I think it was about five years ago? Thanks for coming out, and no problem, eh. If you ever make it to a Clio conference, I'll buy you another one. :)

Thanks for your ongoing support, we always love hearing from our customers!

With the new Clio experience, we're trying to get away from one-off feature votes and trying to understand our customers' problems and workflows in a more holistic way—a feature-oriented view is a bit myopic.

If you'd be interested in getting on a customer interview with our product managers, let our support team know or shoot me a PM here and I'll be happy to put you in touch.

In terms of e-signing, stay tuned :)

Frankly, the most surprising thing is that we've been able to grow and that the company IS the scale it is now. When we started the company nine years ago, I don't think we had any idea how big the market was or how much demand there would be for a product like Clio. We hoped to build a company that would provide a salary for myself and my Co-founder. The fact that we're over 240 employees and 150,000 customers still blows me away every day.