Clio has never shied away from bold acquisitions over the years: acquiring Lexicata in 2018, CalendarRules and Lawyaw in 2021, and ShareDo in March of this year. Now, they’ve made their biggest bet yet. In June, Clio acquired vLex, the global legal research company behind legal research and case law tools, Fastcase and Vincent AI.
Valued at $1 billion USD, this acquisition marks a new stage in both law practice management systems and legal-focused AI. Clio brings its customer base of over 200,000 legal professionals. vLex brings an immense legal research library, spanning the U.S. and international jurisdictions, and cutting-edge legal-specific artificial intelligence in the form of Vincent AI. With this move, Clio hopes to “establish a new category of intelligent legal technology at the intersection of the business and practice of law.”
Clio’s vLex acquisition marks another step in Clio’s maturation towards a full-service platform akin to Microsoft 365. Beginning with law practice management, they’ve steadily expanded with modules for client relationship management (Grow), document automation (Draft), and financial tracking (Accounting). Legal research and advanced legal-appropriate AI are the latest components. With these additions, Clio positions itself as an all-in-one solution for modern law firms.
Trusted by Am Law 100 firms, courts, and law societies around the world, vLex not only enhances Clio’s in-house offerings but also opens up two key growth opportunities. First, the acquisition further strengthens Clio’s drive toward the mid-market and larger law firms, building on its purchase of UK-based ShareDo. Second, in the U.S., many bar associations offer case law research as a free or discounted member benefit, often through Fastcase, a vLex subsidiary. In 2023, Clio announced that it had partnered with all 50 U.S. state-level bar associations. In 2024, Clio boasted over 100 bar association and law society partners worldwide. This strategic combination—legal research and practice management—presents an opportunity to offer a unique, holistic, and integrated law firm solution to bar members.
For followers of legal tech with long memories, Clio’s vLex acquisition may spark reverse déjà vu, if that’s possible. In the 1990s, deep-pocketed research vendors Thompson and Lexis gobbled up legal software products. Legal tech now returns the favor.
Clio’s vLex acquisition represents another step towards the recent vertical integration of legal tech stacks. The first saw practice management system vendors bring electronic payments in-house (e.g., Clio created Clio Payments and LawPay purchased MyCase). The second, towards AI, a shift more rapid than any before in legal tech, continues to bring forth tools that work best the more data and services you use from a single vendor or ecosystem. With vLex, and its Vincent AI, Clio adds legal research to its portfolio of “single source” offerings.
Years ago, Clio CEO Jack Newton remarked that he’d like Clio to be the Microsoft Windows of legal—a common foundation on which people built. By acquiring vLex, Clio’s vision expands to be perhaps the Microsoft?365 of legal—a suite of tools that handle what most attorneys need most of the time. As with consumer offerings in our personal lives, bundled services suggest enticing possibilities, including convenience and cost savings.
While details remain limited for now, Newton teased that, “More on this transformative shift will be shared at ClioCon 2025 in Boston.”
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