A $3 billion company backed by private equity versus one developer who's been building legal software for 20 years. Guess which one needs your subscription to survive.
Follow the money. Understand the incentives.
Clio starts as a scrappy legal tech company. Focused on product. Attorneys love it. Growth is organic.
$250M+ in funding. New investors. New board members. New priorities. The product you loved is now an "asset under management."
Clio raises another $900M at a $3B valuation. That's not product money—that's acquisition money. That's "become the monopoly" money. Your subscription fees now serve investors, not innovation.
Clio sues AI startup Alexi for $35 million, alleging trade secret theft. The message to competitors: we have $900M in the bank and we'll use it to bury you in litigation.
When investors demand returns, you pay. Price increases. Feature paywalls. A platform optimized for shareholder value, not attorney productivity.
EasyStart: $49/mo. Essentials: $99/mo. Suite: $149/mo. Advanced: $249/mo. And those prices only go up. Every year, you pay more for the same access to your own data.
Every client record, every invoice, every privileged document—on Clio's servers. Stop paying? Lose access. Clio goes down? Your practice stops. That's not ownership. That's a hostage situation.
200+ integrations sounds great. Reality: each one is another company with access to your data, another privacy policy, often another monthly fee. You don't want to integrate with QuickBooks. You want it built in.
"When you take VC money, you're not building a product anymore. You're building an exit."
What you actually get for your money
| Feature | Clio | TimeNet Law |
|---|---|---|
|
Pricing Model
How you pay for your software
|
$49-249/month forever | One-time purchase. Yours forever. |
|
5-Year Total Cost
What you'll actually spend
|
$2,940 – $14,940 | $479.99 – $1,760 |
|
Data Location
Where your client files live
|
Their servers (cloud) | Your Mac (local) |
|
Works Offline
Internet goes down, can you work?
|
No | Yes, always |
|
Data Privacy
Who can access your client data?
|
Clio + their integrations | Only you |
|
Built-in AI
An assistant that knows your firm
|
Paid cloud add-on, metered | Free for life, on-device (Oasis) |
|
Where the AI runs
And who sees your prompts
|
Their cloud (can train or expose a model) | Your Mac (never leaves) |
|
AI privilege after US v. Heppner
Is your AI data discoverable?
|
At risk | Stays on your device |
|
Unlimited undo + restore
Take back any change, even the AI's
|
No | Yes, even after you quit |
|
Time Tracking
Track billable hours
|
Yes | Yes |
|
Invoicing
Create and send invoices
|
Yes | Yes |
|
Invoice Customization
Make invoices match your brand
|
Limited templates | Full visual designer (Invoice Architect) |
|
Matter Management
Organize cases and clients
|
Yes | Yes |
|
Trust Accounting
IOLTA compliance
|
Yes | Yes |
|
Built-in Accounting
No QuickBooks needed
|
Requires integration ($) | Built in |
|
Support
Who helps when you're stuck?
|
Ticket queue, chatbots | Direct from the developer |
|
Platform
Where it runs
|
Any browser | Native Mac, iPhone & iPad apps (fast, elegant) |
|
Multi-User Setup
What it takes to share one database
|
Included, on their servers | A shared Dropbox or iCloud folder. No server, no VPN. |
|
What Happens If You Cancel
The exit scenario
|
Lose access to everything | Nothing—it's yours |
|
Exit Cost
What it costs to leave (Clio-commissioned survey)
|
AUD $24,861 average | $0 — it's already yours |
Would you trust your neighbor with privileged files? Then why trust data brokers?
Real reviews from Trustpilot and G2. We didn't write these.
"The customer support is terrible. It can take several days to hear back when you have an issue. They clearly aren't investing the subscription fees back into their product."
— Trustpilot review, 2024
"Another price increase this year. At what point does it become more expensive than just hiring someone to build custom software? Feeling nickel and dimed."
— G2 review, 2024
"The new 'AI features' nobody asked for broke half my workflows. Can I please just have the old version back? I'm paying for stability, not experiments."
— Trustpilot review, 2024
"Tried to cancel and they made it incredibly difficult. Had to jump through hoops just to access my own data. This is not how you treat customers."
— G2 review, 2023
And a solo who tried both
"I love how straightforward and easy to use it is, which is very different than Clio. Tried it for a bit, way too much for a solo, and hard to use for anyone."
Joseph I. Andriano, Esq.
Law Office of Joseph I. Andriano, PLLC
"Of course they do. It's one more line item for your bill."
Clio's AI lives in their cloud. It meters every question and charges you on top of the subscription you already resent. And every word you feed it, your client's secrets, your strategy, your privileged work, lands on someone else's server. A federal judge just ruled that kind of data isn't privileged anymore (US v. Heppner). So you'd be paying extra to hand your client's confidences to a system that can be subpoenaed.
Oasis doesn't work like that.
It runs on your Mac. Your data never leaves the building. Nothing trains a model. Nothing gets metered. And the assistant, First Mate, is free for life, because it costs me nothing to run. Clio can't match free. Not because they won't. Because every answer they give costs them money, and every answer mine gives costs me nothing. That isn't a pricing trick. It's the difference between renting a mainframe and owning your computer.
One Click Billing. Smart rounding. Non-destructive timers. Split billing by party. Text expansion before TextExpander was even a product. I shipped every one of those first, then watched the big cloud apps roll out their own version a year or two later. That's the tell. I lead. They follow.
But here's where they can never follow.
Private AI on your own machine. A complete, permanent history of every change, restorable with one click, even after you quit and relaunch. Working on a plane with no Wi-Fi. Your data that never leaves your Mac. You cannot bolt any of that onto a cloud product. Not with a sprint. Not with a roadmap. Not with $900 million.
What Clio actually costs over 5 years vs. ownership
When AI startup Alexi emerged as potential competition, Clio didn't compete on product—they filed a $35 million lawsuit alleging trade secrets theft. With $900M in the bank, they can afford to bury smaller competitors in legal fees regardless of merit.
This is what $3B in VC funding buys: the ability to eliminate competition through litigation rather than innovation. Is this the company you want holding your client data?
"You went to law school to own your practice.
Not to rent it from a tech company."
"We find that TimeNet Law has reduced our twice-monthly billing time from several hours to several minutes. TimeNet Law is making us money by improving our efficiency."
Mark W. Breneman
Breneman Law, PLLC
They're fundamentally different products. Clio is cloud-based with monthly subscriptions and requires internet. TimeNet Law runs locally on your Mac with a one-time purchase and works offline. For solo and small firm attorneys who value data privacy, reliability, and true ownership, TimeNet Law offers advantages Clio structurally cannot match.
Because incentives matter. A $3B company serves its investors first—growth, acquisitions, exits. A solo developer who's been building legal software for 20 years serves attorneys. When you call for support, you talk to the person who built it. That's accountability you can't get from a ticket queue.
Yes. TimeNet Law can import your client and matter data. Most attorneys complete their migration in under 2 hours. You'll work directly with the developer—not a support team—to make sure everything transfers correctly.
You still own it. Your data is on your Mac in accessible formats. With cloud software, if the company shuts down or gets acquired, you're scrambling to export before the lights go off. With TimeNet Law, the software keeps working regardless of what happens to the developer.
Direct quotes. Their words, not ours.
"Inferences drawn from any of the information identified above to create a profile reflecting a person's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes."
Your $5 billion billing software is building psychological profiles on you.
"We may collect... precise geolocation information."
They track where you physically are.
"We share personal information with... advertising networks, social networks, and marketing partners."
Your data flows to ad networks and marketing companies.
"We may place targeting or advertising cookies on your device."
Tracking cookies. From your billing software.
Read it yourself: clio.com/privacy
No credit card. No subscription. No strangers with access to your client data.
Start Owning Your Practice