5X the Anticipated Growth —How Clio ‘is an Extension’ of Forte Law Group

The right foundation helps Forte Law Group advance the educational rights of children

At Forte Law Group LLC, the focus is clear, and it’s important. The Connecticut-based law firm advocates for and represents the educational rights of children with disabilities and their families.

When starting the firm, Founding Attorney and Owner Jeff Forte knew that the right legal software could help the firm scale, stay on track and serve clients effectively—and he found that support in Clio.

With Clio as a teammate, the special education and child advocacy practice has been able to grow, thrive, and, ultimately, help advance the education rights of children.

How Forte Law Group uses Clio to run their practice effectively

From the firm’s early days, Jeff has used Clio for support. Now, as long-time Clio users, Jeff and his team take advantage of Clio’s full functionality.

“I would consider myself and my firm Clio ‘super users.’ We use Clio Manage, Clio Grow, Clio Scheduler, and Clio Payments. We use Clio matter stages. We text through Clio. We keep our document management through Clio, our calendaring through Clio, and we also use Clio for Clients. So we use every possible avenue. Oh, and e-signatures with Clio.”

The firm’s connection to Clio is about more than just features—it extends to the Clio Cloud Conference and legal community connections that help them stay innovative and at the top of their game.

“The conference is great, because you really get to go into the mind labs with the technicians, and there are also thought-leadership presenters.”

1. It’s easy to get up and running with Clio, and its integrations

Jeff was initially drawn to Clio for its customer support.

“I was looking at some of the other competitors at the time. I think one of the main reasons is that Clio is just so available with its customer service with all of its tutorials.”

Implementing Clio was smooth, and it was easy for Jeff to dive in. On top of that, Clio’s array of integrations streamline processes and simplify practice management for the firm.

“We integrate with Clio through Dialpad, through Office 365, and through Nota. Those are the main synergies that we have, and they all work seamlessly.”

Jeff highlights Nota, which “helps to sync trust deposits by transaction, with the name of the client matter within Clio, automatically. It’s like having an automated bookkeeper.”

2. Clio Grow streamlines client intake

Forte Law Group’s cases typically involve a lot of documents—and it’s crucial that those documents and details are inputted correctly from the start. However, before Clio Grow, client intake was a challenge.

“The biggest pain point was emails and documents that you would need from the lead in advance of their initial consultation. That was just a nightmare.”

With Clio Grow, the firm’s intake process is effective and streamlined.

“I’m a legacy Clio Grow user, but it’s continued to grow with us,” Jeff says. “We usually have our clients and our leads upload everything there is possible about their child’s education and their child’s story. From a technology perspective, the attachment uploading part of the intake process is excellent.”

3. Clio Payments makes it easier to get paid faster

Getting paid—promptly, and in a way that’s convenient for clients—is essential for law firm profitability and cash flow.

After switching from LawPay to Clio Payments last year, Jeff has found that clients pay faster, while the firm saves money at the same time.

“Clio Payments percentage transaction fees are considerably less expensive than other third party integrations for client payments,” Jeff says. “From a business-owner perspective, the financial impact was better on our end, expense-wise and we passed that savings to our clients.”

4. Clio for Clients is a game-changer for attorney-client communication

Effective communication is key to good lawyer-client relationships, and the right tools can help remove barriers. For Jeff, this was the case with the Clio for Clients app.

“The week that Clio for Clients came out, we converted 95% of our clients in 48 hours, and everybody loved it. Everybody thought it was excellent to have that immediate type of instant messaging relationship with your lawyer and your lawyer’s team,” Jeff says. “I don’t necessarily answer every question, but to have that in a confidential secured platform, it kind of changes the formality of when you’re communicating with your client.”

5. Automation saves time

Using Clio to automate tasks, Jeff streamlines operations and saves time—giving the team more time to dedicate to clients.

“We rely on Clio daily for the operations of our firm,” he says. “We’re very automated. Our tasks are delegated now through Clio. We have automated tasks per practice area. With a click of the button, we could go from being retained, or even from intake, to the close of a case. We’ve created automated tasks for the life of the case with deadlines and trigger dates.”

Without Clio, Jeff says that Forte Law Group would look very different from how it is today.

“Internally, we wouldn’t be able to manage anything. We wouldn’t be able to manage our calendar, our client communications, our document management, our payments, and our tasks.”

6. 5x the anticipated growth since adopting Clio

Using Clio to help the firm scale, Forte Law Group has seen tremendous growth.

“We’ve grown by like five times what we anticipated—year over year over year. It’s just a stronger presence.”

This growth has been spurred, in part, by the data that Clio provides—it empowers Jeff to make data-driven decisions that help improve the firm’s performance, and help clients.

“So custom fields, for example. If you wanted to benchmark how many cases you have with certain fact patterns, you could then generate reports,” Jeff explains. “You can look at all of those cases at once, and then build scale on how to handle them.”

Having that data at his fingertips has helped Jeff grow the firm strategically. “That’s been able to help us scale and grow without diluting one of our core values, which is intense collaborative customer service with our clients.”

Clio makes it easier for Forte Law Group to help kids—and to grow

At the end of the day, it all comes back to the firm’s focus for Jeff.

“I tell everybody that I get to wake up every day and help kids. I get to help them advance their education,” Jeff says. “To be able to have a weekly case round meeting and say, ‘Okay, how are we advancing all the kids’ education this week? And how are we going to be using Clio to do it?,’ is really rewarding.”

For other firms considering Clio, Jeff offers some simple advice: “Just jump in and get it. Don’t trial it. Go to the conference. Do the online tutorials. Call customer service, they are great!”

As for Jeff’s hopes for the future of his law firm?

“The long-term vision for the firm is to continue to grow, embrace technology, and continue to help even more families advance the special educational rights of their children. We also want to start using Clio Duo and ‘data sample’ all new rollouts that Clio is doing.”

Indeed, Jeff continues to find new ways to better represent children with disabilities in order to advance their education. Notably, he was recently admitted to the bar of the US Supreme Court.

“Now I can take any case on appeal all the way up to the highest court in the land if I really need to,” he says.