ClioCon, a legaltech confab that is (I am told) a or even “the” must-attend annual industry conference, has added a “legal education” segment to its schedule this year. It’s an “Academic Summit,” as if the gathering is a pinnacle of some sort or a gathering of the educational elite. The “Academic Summit” takes place in Boston, on October 25, 2026.
If you’re interested, here are registration details.
The full conference is on October 26 and 27.
For those readers who are not immersed in the legaltech industry, some comments, below the jump:
Clio is a legal AI software provider. The company is based in Vancouver but operates worldwide. Its website promises that its “Intelligent Legal Work Platform” is the industry’s first “system of action,” which “moves beyond systems of record to bring the business and practice of law together in a single, secure environment, with AI creating continuity across every stage of legal work.”
I can make an educated guess as to what all of that means, but on the surface it seems to be mostly marketing hustle.
A little less than a year ago, Clio acquired vLex. Fastcase also is now part of Clio. As someone who does not teach first-year legal writing / analysis/ research, whatever it is that the “Intelligent Legal Work Platform” does, I expect that Clio and its toolkit and its competitors are now omnipresent in practice sufficiently to be part of the “meet your tech pals” suite that first-year students encounter, together with Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis. If they are not, then I think that they should be.
As to the “Academic Summit,” Clio’s corporate tech history intrigues me more than a little bit when I read that it is designed (per the website) in 3 substantive steps: Opening Keynote (no name provided, yet): “Clio’s perspective on AI and legal education: where the tools are, where they’re headed, and what it means for the people training the next generation”; Facilitated Roundtables: “Structured table discussions on AI and what it means for the future of legal education”; Community Output: “Every table’s work synthesized [by AI, I would guess] into a summary report participants take back to their dean or curriculum committee. Clio-branded, community-authored.”
OK: color me skeptical. (You knew that, reading my intro above). I doubt very much that any responsible Dean will be impressed and influenced by “community output” from (who, exactly?) that is “Clio-branded.” I can only imagine the chuckles in curriculum committees.
Which is not to say that those who actually sign up for the “Academic Summit” will waste their time. For their own careers and interests, building relationships with and learning from peers in other law schools and other legal training settings is almost inevitably and necessarily valuable to them and to their current and future students. Maybe even to colleagues back “home.” Plus, October in Boston offers a beautiful Fall setting. The convention will take place at the Hynes Convention Center, in the Back Bay. Attendees can expect a lot of comfort and fun.
The point, however, which is clear to everyone at those roundtables and elsewhere, is that peer relationships are the spillover effects; attendees are without question customers (actual, potential) rather than “Summiteers.” In yet another respect the good old days of commercials aimed at law faculty and students are over. We (collectively) got used to hearing sales pitches from the principal legacy publishers: Westlaw (now Thomson Reuters) and LexisNexis (now RELX) for online services; West Academic (including Foundation Press), Aspen, and Carolina Academic Press for casebooks. The names have changed from time to time, but the colors of the bindings have largely remained the same.
I haven’t been to the AALS Annual Meeting in years, but I expect that that vendor area at that event is changing similarly. The old guard is being pushed around, if not yet entirely aside.
I could be wrong in my skepticism. Clio may intend that its “Academic Summit” not serve merely as a mostly benign Trojan horse for getting Clio services into law school curricula. Clio may have bigger ambitions. The “Academic Summit” might turn into a pilot version of a productive alternative to … the AALS Annual Meeting itself, and perhaps more.
Everyone in higher education knows that the tech industry has arrived on campus and in the classroom. I’m not a skeptic of the industry top to bottom; I’ve seen a lot of different sides of what has happened already and what is coming soon. In all respects, legal education is far from immune. I simply end here:
Clio wants a word.
