The safety of our customers, members of the legal community, our employees, and their families are our top priority As the situation surrounding COVID-19 evolves, it’s becoming clear that the best way to protect our communities is to take responsible, precautionary measures sooner rather than later. At Clio, we’ve aligned around a set of principles and decisions we’d like to share with the community in the interest of promulgating best practices and generating discussion.
The best response to the COVID-19 pandemic is to maximize social distancing and flatten the curve of the disease’s spread; this will minimize the number of people who get sick, and maximize the medical system’s ability to properly serve those who do fall ill.
We feel the best way for Clio to protect our staff is to close our worldwide offices and enforce mandatory work from home. As an organization that operates in the cloud and provides cloud services, we are uniquely positioned to support the legal community through these changing times.
Please know that during this time, Clio will remain fully operational, and you’ll receive the same 24/5 support you’ve come to rely on—we’re simply adapting our operations to the situation at hand.
Here are just a few of the preliminary steps we have taken to support our customers, the community at large, our teams, and the extended Clio family.
Our commitment to lawyers and the legal community
We’re doing what we can to support lawyers in transitioning to remote work environments. The technology is available now to enable lawyers to work from anywhere, while providing the same level of client service as from their traditional office space. Whether lawyers are choosing to do this temporarily as a response to the COVID-19 situation, or if they choose to build that flexibility into their practice long-term, we’re here to help.
To start, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to working remotely as a lawyer, something that any Clio customer is equipped to do. We’re listening to the community to learn what’s needed and what type of information will be most helpful, and we will continue to share resources as they become available.
We’re also taking steps to do our part to ensure the safety of the community at large. Based on the advice and guidance of government officials and public health authorities, we’ve made the decision to cancel all meetups and events or move them online until further notice.
At this time, the Clio Cloud Conference is still scheduled to take place in October, but we will continue to monitor the situation and reassess our decision as needed. Our flexible refund policy remains in place, which includes the option of a full refund for passes as requested up until August 14, 2020. Should the conference be moved to a later date due to COVID-19, we will reassess the refund deadline.
Our commitment to the wellbeing of our teams
Just as it’s entirely possible for law firms to work remotely, Clio has supported a remote work model for years. In fact, Clio was an entirely remote work team through its first two years of existence. Working remotely is something our teams are already well practiced on, and we are well-positioned to provide the same service and support you’re used to.
We’ll continue to reassess the decisions we’ve made based on the advice of government officials, public health authorities, and our own assessment of the COVID-19 safety situation.
We also don’t believe that our decision to close our offices needs to negatively impact any of the partner vendors we work with to maintain those spaces. We’ll be proudly supporting these companies and workers, such as our cleaning and lunch program providers, by continuing to pay them in full over the duration of our office closures.
Looking ahead
Law firms that have based their practices in the cloud will be able to navigate the next few months much more easily than those that haven’t. For lawyers and legal professionals that have yet to move to the cloud, there’s no time like the present, and we’re here for you.
The worldwide response to COVID-19 over the past few days has been hugely encouraging. To do our part, we’re staunchly committing to supporting the legal community so that law firms can continue to operate while lawyers and legal professionals stay safe and healthy.
Sincerely,