Clio Con Clips 2025 - Harsha Chandra Shekar - E13

0:00Harsha Chandra Shekar:Welcome to ClioCon Clips 2025, recorded live from Boston and proudly sponsored by Clio, the world's leading legal technology company transforming the legal experience for all. I'm your host, Rob Hanna, and over this special Legally Speaking podcast series, we'll be bringing you exclusive conversations with the brilliant minds behind Clio, the innovators, strategists, visionaries driving one of the most transformative companies in legal tech. Across these interviews, we'll explore how Clio is uniting brilliance across teams, technology and communities worldwide. From AI and data to leadership, culture and the future of client experience.

0:38Harsha Chandra Shekar:You'll hear from people shaping what's next for law and redefining what's possible for legal professionals everywhere. So whether you're a lawyer, technologist or leader passionate about innovation, you're in the right place. This ClioCon Clips 2025 is where brilliance meets purpose and the future of law takes shape. Let's get into it.

1:03Harsha Chandra Shekar:Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live from Boston for our ClioCon Clips series 2025, sponsored by Clio. And I'm joined by name, title and organization. I'm Harshad Chandrasekhar. I'm the VP of Business Development at Clio. You sure are. And welcome back to the show. We recently had you on with Kirby, and it was a wonderful episode, and I encourage our listeners to go back and listen to that one. But before we get into all things ClioCon and what's been going on over these past couple of days, I'd like a fun fact for people who may not know about you here at ClioCon. Sure. So I don't know if you call it fun or not, but I am a reformed lawyer.

1:41So I started my career as a corporate attorney and worked in a large law firm for five years before I moved on to the business side of things.

1:49Harsha Chandra Shekar:Yes, and it's an impressive career, I have to say. And I loved learning about that, as I say, when you were on the show previously. But obviously this year, the Clio Integration Awards highlighted some incredible partners specifically. So how do you decide which integrations truly elevate Clio's platform? Yeah, it's always a very tough decision to pick winners because there are so many incredible integrations. So a lot of the focus is really on the quality of the integrations and the feedback that we get from our common customers on those integrations. So you can have an incredible app that's doing great things on a standalone basis, but it's just poorly integrated with us, and they won't even be considered.

2:34Whereas you could have a very simple point solution that just does one thing and that does one thing really well and has very seamlessly integrated with us to bring an incredible connection. And I think those are the ones that we really pick out and highlight as our winners for the integration awards.

2:54Harsha Chandra Shekar:Yeah, I guess it's that kind of inch wide, mile deep on a problem, really going in on it, identifying what it is and being truly valuable makes it a seamless integration. I mean, Jack gave so many updates in his keynote, which is one of the best keynotes I've ever seen, it has to be said. And of course, one of those was the Intelligent Legal Work Platform, which is now live. So what role will partnerships play in expanding its capabilities? Absolutely. So partnership has a huge role to play here. Yeah. And there are so many aspects of clear work and AI where you can actually really boost the effectiveness with deep partnerships.

3:31And I'd like to break it down into different buckets. Right. Sure. First is really around, hey, how do you improve the quality of the data that you have? Yeah. Right. So there's going to be a lot of content partnerships that Clio and Vilex would be building to supercharge our content and essentially effectively compete with the top dogs of the legal research world. Absolutely. Right. So that's definitely one area. Similarly, AI partnerships are going to be very important. Yeah. And this includes not just the underlying AI that we use, but also is there a play here where we can actually partner with some AI company on a consumer-facing basis where users who may or may not be lawyers get some visibility into the output of the research, but then can actually subscribe to get more, right?

4:29So there are flavors like that. The second big area is going to be distribution. Yes. Where how do we, who do we have to partner with to really distribute on a one-to-many basis? And we've seen some big partnerships announced by many other AI-driven legal companies. And we are kind of unique because we actually already have amazing distribution. So we have that platform to start from. We have a very mature channel program. And now we are looking to supercharge it by, you know, looking at, OK, who are these partners who can take us deep into the enterprise?

5:09Harsha Chandra Shekar:And I love Clio's approach around partnerships, the level of due diligence you do, the way you approach collaboration. It's just been a true success story from start to finish. And from yourself, coming from a big tech, what lessons from companies like, you know, the likes of, I don't know, say an Uber or an Amazon have influenced your approach to building ecosystems of Clio? Actually, Uber was a very influential part of my career where it shaped me as a leader. And one of the things Uber did really well was despite being a giant in one area, they were able to pivot into other areas. A good example is Uber was massive in ride hailing.

5:46But Uber was pretty small when it came to food delivery in a far distant second from DoorDash. And COVID happened and all of a sudden ride hailing kind of came to a screeching halt. and everyone wanted everything delivered to them. And Uber actually very successfully and very quickly pivoted to a point where actually the delivery became at least half or more than half of the business. And the volume of deliveries, it's not like it tanked after post-COVID. It's kept on, right? So those are the kind of effective pivots when you're a part of it firsthand. And you realize that you need to be constantly looking at, okay, what's the most valuable area that you can now get into?

6:34And no place is a destination. It's already a journey, right? And if I were to put it in the context of Clio, yes, law practice management software, we have been and we were the top dots. But now we are not just that. We are also an AI company and a research company, right? and our competition set has also increased. Now, you can argue that in the eyes of the customer, for a lot of the searches, you're actually competing with OpenAI where customers are like, hey, should I go on GPT and do this initial search or should I go on Vincent? And that's where all of a sudden now you're playing at that from a national level, you're playing at an international level.

7:24a huge level. You're playing at the top stage and now you are actually even if you might be partnering for the underlying LLM or whatnot you're actually also competing in the eyes of the customer for that particular instance and interaction and I think that's the piece that you know we really need to be sharp we need to be ready for taking on the small techs the big techs the horizontal sasses and that's what's going to keep us successful.

7:51Harsha Chandra Shekar:Yeah and I have no doubt and And it's been, as I say, it's been a real sort of momentum shift this last 12 months, particularly after the Series F and everything that's been announced recently. But when we go into the AI discussion, trust is obviously very important. So how do you build trust into partnerships when AI and data are at the center of pretty much everything? Absolutely. Trust is the most important thing. And there are a few things that really drive trust. First is transparency, right? We have very clear terms which help our customers very easily and clearly understand what the data is being used for.

8:29And that's really important. And when we actually partner, we are always keeping our customers in mind. And there are a few things that we are trying to always reiterate. It's not our data. It's our customers' data. We are holding it in trust for them. Yeah. Right. So so that brings us a lot of responsibility to make sure that any instance of data sharing has to have all the right approvals to read, write, edit the data. The customer has to have very clear visibility into what the data is being used for. And we also very deeply negotiate all the rights around what are the permissible purposes if you're passing on any data.

9:12What are the permissible purposes for use of the data? And we want to make sure that customer A's data is not being used to actually offer better services to customer B. So there are those really fine lines that we need to draw and we need to make sure that we are staying on top of. And we need to ensure that not just legally through contract, but also practically around how the integration happens, we are safeguarding our customers' data.

9:42Harsha Chandra Shekar:Yeah, and it's something I know is absolutely paramount and where Clio does a lot of due diligence, a lot of hard work. And I've seen that firsthand from the collaborations and speaking to many members across the team. This year's theme for ClioCon is Uniting Brilliance. So I guess, how does Uniting Brilliance come to life through collaboration internally and externally? That's a great question. And let me answer internally. Right. So business development is this function that's essentially the conduit between an organization and another. So internally, uniting brilliance becomes really important because we are working very, very closely with product as well as all the go-to-market functions.

10:28Yep. To really identify what are the areas where we actually need external collaboration versus what are the areas where we are building, right? So that build by partner conversation becomes really important. And the other piece around internally aligning resources is what happens after we sign the contract. Because in the BD world, we know that the majority of the contracts, once they get signed, they actually don't get executed on. So how do you align everyone around that mission so that the moment you're signed, you're sprinting against it, and you're hitting all the milestones to make sure that the partnership is successful?

11:09So that's internal. Externally, it also becomes really important for us to identify where we want to go and where we don't want to go alone but through a partnership and then find the right partner in the space. As you can see in legal tech, this segment has proliferated. Yes. And there's so many players now. And there are hyper specialists. There are practice area agnostic resources. There are point solutions. There are broad solutions. And it becomes really important for us to make sure that whoever we are partnering with is really well thought through. and the integration and the experience we're bringing reflects the same standards that Clio has for itself.

11:58So oftentimes, you know, we realize that we are really well-regarded in the industry and when we meet a partner and we are like, yeah, the solution is there, but it's not right up there, or there are trust issues, whether we, that partner and their customers, then we shy away from it because we have a very strong reputation that we need to not just protect but grow. And that's a big part of unifying premiums externally.

12:27Harsha Chandra Shekar:Yeah, and thank you for such a sort of detailed, easy-to-understand answer because it's so important getting that right internally and externally, and it's so good to hear how you're approaching it. Before we sort of zoom out and get your reflections from Clio Khan, what excites you most about the future of Clio's partnerships and the broader legal ecosystem? them? What excites me the most is really clear of getting into the practice of law. Yeah. Because that unlocks a lot of very important partnership opportunities for us. Yeah. And now we are not just helping a law firm run its back end better.

13:01We are actually helping the lawyer to do their work better and very directly contributing to their success. And that really increases the surface area for partnerships for us and and i feel like this is an area where we want to be very thoughtful identify all the niches that we are at least three or five years away from getting into and making sure that we are building partnerships so that we can accelerate bringing

13:29Harsha Chandra Shekar:those solutions to our customers yeah and i'm excited for that for the journey harshan you know it's amazing what's been done on the partnership from um over the last 12 months and indeed prior. Okay, zoom out. What's been a highlight moment of yours for ClioCon 2025? Honestly, you can't beat Jack's speech. Yeah. Right? So that's definitely been the highlight moment because just seeing the reactions from the people in the room was great. And then if I were to expand the definition of a moment, then I would also include the one-on-one interactions and the reactions I got from leaders in legal tech and members of the bar in conversations around Jack's keynote.

14:16So everyone's been super excited about the announcements, and they recognize that this is probably the first time a law practice management solution and a research software has been pulled together using the threads of AI and being brought in as a singular platform for those customers. and yeah everyone's very excited and i'm very confident that we will rise up to the expectation and the product will continue to all the people beyond just jack's presentation yeah and we fully

14:50Harsha Chandra Shekar:support that and we're excited to see the continuation of that journey and harsha it's been an absolute blast having you back and doing this live here at cleo con in boston if folks want to know more about cleo or indeed get in touch with yourself what's the best place feel free to share any websites any social media handles will share them this episode for you too cleo's website is the best place. So go to Cleo.com, acquaint yourself with the product. Always welcome to reach out over LinkedIn and happy to connect with fellow industry professionals as well as make sure that anybody who's interested in Cleo is pointed the right way.

15:23Harsha Chandra Shekar:Thank you so much, Harsha. It's been an absolute blast, as I say. But from now, from all of us here on the Leaders Speaking Podcast sponsored by Cleo, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world-leading content and collaboration hub, The Legally Speaking Club, over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There's a link to join our community there. Over and out.