Clio vs Filevine

The short version

Clio and Filevine are both large, well-funded legal software companies, but they are built for different firms. Clio is a generalist used by many solo, small and multi-practice firms, with personal injury handled through an add-on. Filevine is built for litigation, especially high-volume PI and mass torts, with deeper workflows and its own AI. Both can serve a PI firm. The question is how much PI depth you need, and how much you are willing to assemble from add-ons and outside apps.

Who each is built for

Clio completed its roughly $1B acquisition of vLex in November 2025 and raised a $500M Series G at a $5B valuation. LawSites reported the combined company at about $400M in annual recurring revenue and 400,000 legal professionals. Clio Manage is practice management for nearly any practice, Clio Grow handles intake and CRM, and Clio Work is its AI workspace for research and drafting, built on the vLex library. Clio Work became available as a standalone product for solo and smaller firms in April 2026.

Filevine announced $400M raised and nearly 6,000 customers in September 2025. A third-party comparison updated in October 2026 describes it as built for high-volume plaintiff PI, mass tort and complex litigation, with configured onboarding around practice templates.

Personal injury depth

Clio's Personal Injury Add-On lets a firm log records and bills requests, track treatment dates and providers, follow up on requests, track liens and damages, and calculate the client's net in a settlement calculator that deducts liens. Clio's help center notes the add-on is not available on every plan. For AI chronologies and demands, Clio firms use outside apps; Eve, for example, has a Clio integration.

Filevine builds PI deeper into the core, with case-phase templates, DemandsAI, MedChron and LOIS Console, which runs agents across matters and writes results back, such as drafting demand letters for cases that need them.

Trust accounting and pricing

Trust accounting

Clio includes trust accounting in every plan, according to the same third-party comparison. That matters for firms that also bill hourly or flat-fee work. A PI-only contingency firm cares more about settlement statements, liens and costs.

Pricing

Clio publishes one price: EasyStart at $49 per user per month on annual billing. Higher tiers are quote-gated; third parties commonly report about $89, $119 and $149, which are unconfirmed. Clio Grow is sold separately except with the top tier.

Filevine sells by custom quote. A third-party guide estimates about $65 to $100 per user per month and $5,000 to $20,000 to implement. Treat both vendors' unpublished figures as estimates.

Which one fits which firm

Choose Clio if you are a solo or small firm, practice in several areas, want to start quickly, need trust accounting and billing, or want the largest app marketplace.

Choose Filevine if PI or mass torts is most of your work, you carry hundreds of active cases, and you want PI workflows and AI from one vendor.

A common path is to start on Clio as a small general practice, then reconsider as PI volume grows. Signs you have outgrown a generalist setup: case managers tracking treatment and records in spreadsheets, demands assembled by hand from scattered files, and no single view of which cases are waiting on records or offers. If that sounds familiar, compare Filevine and other PI-built systems before adding more add-ons.

Questions to ask either vendor:

• Which PI features are in the plan we would buy, and which are add-ons?
• How are records requests, treatment, liens and settlement math handled?
• What does migration include, and how long did it take a firm our size?
• How is our data exported if we leave?

Related: Filevine vs CasePeer and our PI case management software guide.

Where PlaintiffStack fits

PlaintiffStack is case management with AI built in for California PI, workers' comp and employment. It is $250 per case with every app included and no monthly fee; AI usage is billed separately, with an estimated cost before each run. It has no trust accounting, so it suits contingency firms that keep trust in their accounting system; the settlement statement computes fee, costs, liens and net to client. It reads searchable files only, with no OCR yet.

See PlaintiffStack vs Clio, PlaintiffStack vs Filevine and pricing.