Clio Con Clips 2025 - Joshua Lenon - E10

0:00Welcome 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, you'll hear from people shaping what's next for law and redefining what's possible for legal professionals everywhere.

0:45So 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.

1:03Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live here from Boston for our ClioCon Clips 2025 series sponsored by Clio. And I'm joined by name, title and organization. Joshua Lennon, lawyer and resident at Clio. And it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you back on the show. It's always great to be talking with you. Right back at you. And this year's Clio has been another level. But before we get into that, could we get a fun fact from you, Joshua, that people here may not know about you?

1:29Joshua Lenon:Yes, actually. So I'm dual citizen, American, Canadian. I'm a New York licensed attorney. And while Clio is headquartered in Vancouver, I actually live just off the coast of British columbia on a tiny island called bowen island 4 000 people uh just about as many deer one mountain lion that's having the time of its life this summer um and on a good day i can sit on my deck and watch the whales swim by and is that the deck you made yourself i think i saw some images of you doing some good diy yeah uh because it is an island you have to get really handy really quickly because there's no hardware store.

2:15Joshua Lenon:There's no supplies. You got to bring it over the ferry. And if you don't have it, you do without. You step up. So it sounds a lot more off the grid than it really is. Yeah, yeah. But no, I'm really fortunate to get to do this. And as somebody who grew up in Missouri, of all places, to now have mountains and oceans just be a part of my day-to-day is honestly like the funnest fact about me. Yeah. Come visit. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. And I guess, you know, this year has been incredible for Clio and ClioCon, but this year's Legal Trends Report, which I found super interesting, included neuroscience studies.

2:53Yes. So, you know, the first of its kind in law. So what did you find most surprising about the results?

2:59Joshua Lenon:So we always talk about how law school teaches you to think like a lawyer. Yes. Right. And honestly, having gone through that process, I felt that shift in my brain. And so the fact that we, as an industry, talk about lawyers having a different brain is always something that's been top of mind. But one of the things that I've been concerned about in the last several years as we talk about the rise of generative AI and the use of artificial intelligence in law firms is we always talk about how it's going to take the easy work, the tedious work, the grunt work away. And I was like, okay, but how are lawyers going to deal with a day being filled with the hard work that AI can't do?

3:53Joshua Lenon:The hard decisions and judgment and expertise that people go to lawyers for. Those are all incredibly valuable, but it's also tiring, draining. It can necessitate breaks. Yep. Right. And so we needed to ask, like, if we're letting AI take over the easy stuff, can lawyers handle an increased volume of the hard work? Yes. And so we partnered with this organization called Neuro Insights, a company called Neuro Insights. They specialize in testing the electromagnetic activity of the brain. Yeah. They often are looking at it on behalf of marketing and advertising agencies. But with us, what we wanted to do was run a controlled experiment.

4:44Joshua Lenon:Yeah. how do lawyers brains operate using kind of the standard traditional tools that have been around a long time versus an experiment group that's using Clio technology including artificial intelligence we measured four areas of activity in the brain visual activity how much am I having to like direct my attention into multiple places and obviously that takes energy yeah in your brain to do that active focus how much am i having to like force myself to pay attention to complete something right emotional intensity yep am i feeling emotion and neuro insights taught us that in order to generate memory there does need to be emotion attached to it yes right uh and so i think we've all read like an email from somebody and then like five minutes later be like what was that?

5:41Joshua Lenon:Yes. I didn't remember anything about that. And it's because when you were reading it, you weren't feeling anything. Right. And then the last one is memory demand. As I'm actively going through a task, right? How much am I having to like commit to memory in order to complete that task? And honestly, this is the one that I most resonated with. I have struggled for years in reading contracts because I want to be able to like flip back and forth between the pages. and I have contorted my hands to like, okay, this is the first page and now I can flip and then I can flip back. And that's a memory demand compensation, right?

6:23Joshua Lenon:I can't memorize every defined term, but I can know where I'm going to have to turn back. And that became then a visual impact that we talked about before. So we measured these four things with them. With 63 legal professionals, all who practice private law, 77 % had never used Clio before, and we put them to the test with four different tasks. The control group was using spreadsheets and pen and paper for these tasks, and the experiment group was using Clio. Clio Grow, Clio Manage, and Manage AI. And what we asked them to do was intake a client from an introductory email, create a matter from, again, another email.

7:06Joshua Lenon:The third task was give us a work in progress report. Tell us how many time entries you've done. What was the amount that's the total for it? And then the last one was I pulled an actual six page will from the will repository of the state of Massachusetts where we are right now, which is a fun coincidence. And then we asked questions about certain things that were stated in that will, right? But it was only six pages long. And so the one group had the PDF and the experiment group had Clio Manage AI look at the PDF. And so as we put them through the test, what we found is that the lawyers and legal professionals who were using the Clio tools, Clio Grow, Clio Manage, Manage AI actually had a 25 % less strain on their cognitive capacity than the lawyers who were doing things with Excel and spreadsheets and pen and paper.

8:12Joshua Lenon:It took less or the same amount of visual impact to use a spreadsheet than it was to use Clio tools. And that really surprised us because, again, like 77 % had never seen Clio before, yet they were able to jump into this and they didn't have to like, where am I going? When it came to active focus, especially on the work in progress report, and I think a clear example of what's the difference here, they were able to just hit a button, right? And the report just came up. You didn't have to like, now I'm adding this column and now I'm adding this figure and now I carry the one. And that's an active focus moment.

8:53Joshua Lenon:And it showed how you could be productive, have the same exact outcome, but a lot less strain from it. When it came to emotional intensity, client intake, we saw a reduction in emotional intensity, but an increase when it came to the work in progress report and the, the will document summary. And we dug into that because honestly it was not our preferred outcome, right? To see this jump in, in activity and an intensity. Uh, but what we found was measured was not, um, negative emotional strain, but instead positive emotional excitement. Yes. Yeah. The work in progress report, they're like, I clicked a button and it's done.

9:40Joshua Lenon:The document summarization, they're like, oh my gosh, this is a really neat tool. And so we found that the Clio experiment group were feeling 47 % felt excitement, 47 % also felt happiness, 6 % felt tenderness, which I just love throwing in there. And had no negative emotions recorded at all. So, yeah, there was this bump in emotional intensity, but it was actually a positive, memorable association. Yes. Yeah. And then when we hit the memory demand, we saw a reduction as well, especially in the will summarization, like answering questions about the will. But while it was an 11-point drop in memory demand, you didn't have to memorize as much to get things done.

10:27Joshua Lenon:What was actually really exciting was we also saw a 130 % increase in productivity and a 40 % increase in accuracy by the people who were using the AI tool. so they were faster they were more accurate and they left feeling both excitement and happiness and with greater capacity to go on to the next task so it was a really exciting look into the brains of lawyers like how we think but also how we can think better using these tools super exciting and this just shows the level of due diligence and care cleo does as a tech forward pioneering companies to do that level of sort of, you know, really pioneering research to produce these research.

11:12Joshua Lenon:Yeah, we're the first ever in the legal industry to do this. Yeah, and that's exciting. I just want to dive a bit deeper on a few of the stats you mentioned there because, you know, the research showed, as you mentioned, 25 % reduction in cognitive loads when lawyers were using Clio. Yeah. What does that actually tell us about the future of work and law? So, as we've talked about, right, if we're automating the easy stuff, right, Right. What's it going to take to do the hard stuff? And the answer is that we can find a way to handle this hard work in a way that isn't harmful to lawyers. Yeah. Or at least less harmful.

11:46Joshua Lenon:Right. It's a 25 percent reduction. There's still there's still some cognitive strain. Yeah. But our own survey of legal professionals and we talked to 1700 legal professionals this year all came back and were very highly rating the benefits of using artificial intelligence. in many ways. And while a large percentage were saying there was a reduction in tedious work, there was an equally high number who were saying they felt empowered to do the complex work now. And we're also reporting a reduction in stress, a better work-life balance, and even a large percentage were like, I actually want to stay in this job now.

12:25Yeah. And that's important, improving the overall well-being, happiness, good for retention, just genuine overall satisfaction really important and thank you for highlighting that and again the legal trends report continues to reveal though the gap between what clients expect and what lawyers deliver yes so what's one mindset shift you think lawyers must make to bridge the

12:45Joshua Lenon:gap particularly in this ai era we still see that not as many law firms as we would like are including client satisfaction in their decision making process okay so one of the interesting bits of study we did this year was a longitudinal study over the financial performance of law firms over the last five years. And this is the second time we've done this. So we did it first in 2019, looking back five years, now 2025, looking back five years. And we found that there is a group of law firms that we label growing that are increasing their revenue over that five-year period greater than 20%. And then there's a stable cohort.

13:27Joshua Lenon:They kind of fluctuate, but neither higher or lower than 20%. And then a shrinking cohort who see their revenue actually decrease at 20 % or more. Growing law firms are reporting a higher focus on client and employee satisfaction when they're looking at using technology. So they're not just looking at a tool and be like, oh, that saves me time. But actually, this is good for my team. And here's how it helps my clients. And so AI is a part of that. But we've also seen they're applying that same kind of approach to things like email automation, client intake, using like online forms to help speed up that process, client scheduling, electronic payments.

14:16Joshua Lenon:I think there's one other. You'll have to read the report to find out the one more. Absolutely. And it's the most comprehensive report you will find in the market. I know the amount of work that goes into that. So we really appreciate the work that you do and that goes into it all. I guess one of the things that needs to be considered though in this AI automation world is ethical considerations and how the industry can actually keep front and center. What do you say to that? I think they're actually the same concerns that we've always had, ethically speaking, around relying upon third parties to help us practice law, whether it be an employee, whether it be a service provider, whether it be a technology vendor.

14:54Joshua Lenon:We have to remain committed to professional independent judgment, to being responsible on behalf of our clients when it comes to the confidentiality of their data, and to be responsive as much as technology will enable to meet the growing demands of our client base. And I find something really encouraging in some of the data we published this year around that. We saw actually a bump in legal consumers wanting law firms to disclose if they're using AI. Okay. Right? That seems problematic because it seems like they might not be trusting law firms that use AI, but our data actually shows we're not seeing a growing distrust of law firms using AI, but they just want to know if you're using AI.

15:46Joshua Lenon:And this is why we ask those same consumers if they're turning to AI to ask legal questions. 53 % of them said they either are or they're open to it. 14 % already have. And what I think they're telling us between those two facts is I can go and ask AI for help. But when I'm coming to a law firm, I want to know it's the lawyer that's helping me. And that's actually really consistent with some of our past research on how clients want face-to-face communication, especially when it comes to discussing their case, conveying their story, learning their options. I think we're seeing that same kind of desire for expert help carrying now through into the AI era.

16:35Yeah, and that leads nicely on to what else I was going to talk about in this data and AI driven world, which is access to justice and something that Jack spoke very passionate about in his keynote, which was absolutely phenomenal, has to be said this year. And so how does data driven insights help close the global access to justice gap that still exists today?

16:54Joshua Lenon:Clio can only help in one small aspect of that, to be perfectly honest. and that's can we help make access to legal representation more available yeah and the reason i frame it that way is because we work with people who are providing legal representation right law firms and lawyers and paralegals those are our customer base so we can't solve every access to justice problem yeah but the legal trends report actually exists to help law firms know how to create affordable, sustainable, mutually beneficial legal services and where technology can fit into that mix. So one of the things that we can publish and we do every year is what's the average hourly rate for lawyers and non-lawyers.

17:42Joshua Lenon:And also where does automation help contribute to a law firm's financial performance? Our longitudinal study showed that. The more you're able to kind of delegate administrative work and focus on legal work, the better your law firm does. And what we see is firms that are making those investments are actually being chosen by the public. because they offer a legal representative experience that meets clients where they are and gives them a wide variety of options for communication, for scheduling, for payments. It continues to go on there. This isn't this year's Legal Trends Report, but an example is from our 2023 Legal Trends Report where we looked at four years' worth of electronic payments, Paying by credit card, paying by BAC back.

18:38Joshua Lenon:Yep. All right, yeah. And other methods like that. How does that help a law firm's bottom line? And it's very beneficial to a law firm. They get paid twice as fast. But then we looked at a lot of the features that depend on having electronic payments. Things like automated bill reminders. Things like advanced fee deposits that go into client accounts. Things like payment plans. And what we found is law firms that were using those with electronic payments were seeing really positive returns as well. Except for payment plans, where we saw collection rate decreased for law firms. It was a 2 % lower correlation than firms that weren't using payment plans.

19:22Joshua Lenon:We're like, that doesn't make any sense at all. Payment plans are one of the things almost every client asks for, and it's what makes legal services somewhat affordable. Absolutely. Yeah. So we dug into that and it was entirely the way we did the math that created that result. So we were looking at your annual overall average collection rate, but the collection rate itself is calculated on a rotating three-month basis. Right. Not every client pays the bill right when they get it. Not right. Payment plans just broke that cycle. most payment plans that we're looking at are a year year plus and so it just broke that three month calculation it was marked as unpaid for a year even though you were getting paid and I know under the UK Financial Services Act right like 12 months 12 payments that's like the limit before you get into consumer credit services yeah and so you need to know these things in the UK.

20:32Joshua Lenon:But we're like, okay, so we've broken the collection rate math. Is it worth it for law firms to do this? And what we found is that law firms that were offering payment plans were on average seeing 43 % higher revenue than firms that weren't. And solo and small firms, so your high street firms, were seeing up to 70 % more revenue on average than firms that weren't offering it. And so we had to like, oh, okay, we got to shift how we look at this to see the benefit. Here's where we get even further into the access to justice, right? Okay. So that's great. Law firms offer payment plans. They make more money.

21:10Joshua Lenon:How is that access to justice? Well, what's the average payment in that payment plan? And for the last four years when we did this, and since I check it periodically, the average payment amount is right around$400. Wow. Yeah. And so we can translate that to pounds. But what we're seeing is we've stumbled upon what the market is telling us is affordable legal services, affordable legal representation. And so the big data and reportability that we are able to bring back to our customers is not just benefiting law firms now, but we're going beyond that and benefiting their clients and hopefully the public's access to legal services well into the future.

21:59Really well said. And I have to say, congratulations on 10 years of the Legal Trends Report and the quality of the content, everything you've been putting out. I mean, we could speak for hours on this stuff. It's been fascinating. And I guess just to zoom out before we look to close um joshua what's been a highlight moment for you this year you've been to many many clio

22:17Joshua Lenon:cons but what's been a highlight moment for you this year here in boston thus far honestly jack's keynote i've we've everybody's talked about how amazing it is um for me what was special about it is a lot of what he's talking about is a vision i've been seeding yep in various departments for the last five years and and this is not to brag um because um what is coming to the forefront is even more than what i was imagining but i could see automation potential that we just needed data yep to make possible um and i i was like we need to be able to pull like the court records we We need to be able to pull scheduling orders.

23:03Joshua Lenon:We need to be able to, and with the acquisition of VLACs, in addition to great case law, right, great regulations and black letter law, we also do see this integration into court systems. Yes. And so for litigators, the automation capabilities are just going to skyrocket. And I don't want transactional lawyers to feel left out. We're going to be pulling from a wide variety of sources to help with them as that as well, as new regulations get proposed, for example. Like, how is that going to, like, drill down on which of your client base are going to be impacted? Do you need to update your workflows?

23:38Joshua Lenon:Because there's a new form coming out, right? There's all kinds of similar automations that we can do. But I'm just so excited. Yeah. You know, this idea I had five years ago has also taken a hold of the smartest people I know, Team Clio, the smartest people we know outside of Clio, VLX. And we're going to work together to build it now. And I'm excited for you. And this has been an incredible journey. And I just love all your insights, the level of detail, the way you come to these interviews, Joshua. Tons of value. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about Clio or indeed get in touch with yourself, what's the best place for them to go?

24:15Feel free to share any websites or any social media. Absolutely.

24:17Joshua Lenon:Well, Clio.com is the website. The Legal Trends Report is available at Clio.com forward slash LTR, Legal Trends Report, LTR. and you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name's Joshua Lennon, L-E-N-O-N or at Blue Sky. My username is Joshua Lennon there. Can I do like one more thing? Absolutely. All right, this is for you. Next year, there's going to be some special content coming out that's focused specifically at the United Kingdom. Okay. This is my like, coming soon. This is a good teaser. Make sure you're following Joshua on socials and go and check out the website and the Legal Trends Report.

24:56Once again, thanks so much for joining me here on the League Speaking Podcast live from Boston, sponsored by Cleo. But for now, 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 of 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.