Each year, ClioCon is more than just a legal tech conference—it’s a snapshot of where the legal industry is headed. But this year’s event, held in Boston, felt different. It wasn’t just about product updates or incremental improvements. It was about transformation—about what happens when artificial intelligence becomes the connective tissue of legal work.

Jack Newton, Clio’s CEO, delivered one of the most memorable opening keynotes in the company’s history. As LawNext reported, his message landed on a “sometimes shell-shocked” audience: the next chapter of Clio’s platform would move beyond being a “system of record” to becoming a true “system of action.” This was more than branding—it was a philosophical redefinition of how legal work could flow in an AI-driven world. Instead of software that simply logs and stores what lawyers do, Clio’s vision centers on systems that anticipate, recommend, and even take the next step on behalf of users.

That vision was made tangible through a sweeping series of new product announcements—described by LawNext as “quite literally the biggest wave of innovation in Clio’s history.” Clio introduced its new “Intelligent Legal Work Platform,” which integrates AI across intake, research, drafting, billing, and analytics. The flagship addition was Clio Work, an AI workspace designed to bridge matter data, legal research, and drafting tools—turning scattered tasks into contextualized workflows.

Then came Vincent by Clio, the powerful legal AI engine built on Clio’s acquisition of vLex, now combining more than a billion legal documents from 110 jurisdictions. The platform aims to make contextual legal intelligence a standard part of everyday lawyering, not a specialized luxury. Clio also revealed “Clio for Enterprise” and “Clio Operate,” signaling its serious move beyond small firms and into mid-sized and enterprise legal markets—an expansion that 3 Geeks and a Law Blog described as a “serious play” that BigLaw should watch closely. 

While the product announcements dominated headlines, the ideas that lingered came from the sessions and conversations about how AI will actually reshape the practice of law. In his closing keynote, legal futurist Richard Susskind urged attendees to think bigger—not just about automating existing tasks, but about reinventing legal work itself. In his talk, “How to Think About AI,” summarized in a Billables AI blog post, Susskind outlined six hypotheses for the future of AI, ranging from automation and augmentation to artificial general intelligence and human–machine collaboration. His central argument was that law firms must move beyond adopting tools that simply make old processes faster and instead explore how intelligent systems can create new kinds of value. 

If Susskind’s message was about the “why,” the Above the Law reflections captured the unspoken “what.” As columnist Joe Patrice observed, the most interesting thing about ClioCon 2025 was the word no one said: “agentic.” Throughout the event, AI was discussed as a co-pilot, assistant, or companion—but never as an independent actor. The omission spoke volumes. The industry may not be ready to say it out loud, but ClioCon revealed that law’s future is moving quietly toward agentic AI—systems capable of taking context-aware actions on behalf of users, not just generating drafts or suggestions. In this light, Clio’s framing of a “system of action” felt like an intentional bridge: acknowledging that true autonomy is coming, but choosing language the legal community is still comfortable with.

That subtle distinction—between assistive and agentic—may end up defining the next several years of AI adoption in law. As Patrice noted, it’s not about replacing lawyers but expanding what’s possible when intelligent systems can shoulder real workflow responsibility. In another Above the Law piece, from Carolyn Elefant, she emphasized that solos and small firms, in particular, have an advantage in this new landscape: their agility allows them to test and deploy new technologies faster than larger organizations weighed down by hierarchy and process. 

What stands out most from ClioCon 2025 is how unified the conversation felt across every segment of the industry. Whether you were a solo attorney, a legal ops leader, or a vendor in the expo hall, the message was clear: AI is not a feature—it’s a foundation. As legal work becomes more context-aware and predictive, the firms that thrive will be those that embrace automation not to do the same work faster, but to reimagine what “legal work” means altogether.

ClioCon 2025 wasn’t just a look at the future—it was a glimpse into how quickly that future is becoming the present. For legal professionals, now is the time to start preparing for the shift from cloud to context, from systems of record to systems of action, and from time-based productivity to outcome-based value.

The next era of law isn’t waiting—and as this year’s ClioCon made clear, it’s already begun.