New investor for Canadian SaaS provider Clio: Acton Capital supports growth trajectory with $6 M investment
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Acton Capital Press
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January 31, 2012
NEW YORK, NY and VANCOUVER, BC – Clio, the leader in cloud-based management tools for the legal industry, announced today at LegalTech New York that it has raised $6 million in its Series B round of financing. The funding was led by Acton Capital Partners, a Munich-based growth equity investor; existing investors, including Point Nine Capital, also participated in the round.
“The legal space is ripe for disruption,” said Boris Wertz, Acton’s Vancouver-based Venture Partner and a new member of Clio’s Board of Directors. “Although this industry has traditionally been regarded as slow to adopt technological changes, recent investments show it’s now ready to benefit from technological innovations like cloud computing.”
We believe that Clio can take advantage of this tremendous opportunity by implementing their vision of moving the legal industry to the cloud.” --Boris Wertz, Venture Partner North America, Acton Capital
According to the American Bar Association, more than 80 percent of the law firm market is made up of solo practitioners or small firms. “With few support staff and no IT departments, these professionals are often overwhelmed by the administrative side of their business,” said Clio Founder and CEO Jack Newton. “Clio is designed specifically for these lawyers. By moving their practice management to the cloud, we give these lawyers tools to manage their practices and build client relationships that are both more secure and more collaborative.”
Clio will use this new funding to extend its product leadership position, aggressively developing new functionalities and supporting its growing customer base.
In addition, the company aims to expand its footprint beyond the U.S. (which currently represents 95% of Clio’s sales) into other markets including Europe, Canada and Australia.
“Clio has seen incredible growth since our launch nearly four years ago because legal professionals have recognized that, through the cloud, we can deliver unprecedented levels of mobility, security and efficiency to their practices,” said Newton. “We look forward to using this latest financing to deliver a broad range of exciting new features to our users while continuing to deliver the world-class support they have come to expect.”
Clio is a comprehensive web-based practice management product specifically designed for solo practitioners and small-to-medium-sized law firms. Clio can be accessed using PCs and Macs as well as mobile devices including iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.
Secure and easy-to-use, Clio provides case/matter management, time tracking, billing/reporting, client contact and document management, task scheduling, trust accounting, and detailed reporting. In addition, Clio includes Clio Connect, a secure portal for exchanging information and collaborating with clients, and Clio Express, an offline time capture application.
Clio is based in Vancouver, B.C., and was founded by Jack Newton and Rian Gauvreau in 2007.
