If you run a small or midsize law firm, you've probably heard of Clio. It's the most widely adopted practice management platform in the market, used by over 150,000 legal professionals for billing, client intake, calendaring, and firm operations. With the launch of Clio Manage AI (formerly Clio Duo), they've added AI features to their existing platform.
Parachute is a different kind of tool. It's not practice management — it's a platform for doing the actual legal work. Drafting documents, reviewing contracts, giving client advice, building a knowledge base that makes your firm's AI smarter over time.
The question isn't which one to choose — it's understanding what each does so you invest in the right tool for the right job.
Two different problems
Practice management and legal work production are fundamentally different categories. Conflating them leads to firms buying AI that automates the wrong things.
What Clio does
Clio is built around firm operations. It handles the business side of running a law firm:
Time tracking and billing. Log time, generate invoices, accept payments. This is Clio's core strength and the reason most firms adopted it.
Client intake and CRM. Manage contacts, track leads, onboard new clients. Clio Grow handles the client acquisition pipeline.
Calendaring and task management. Court dates, deadlines, to-dos. Integration with Outlook and Google Calendar.
Document storage. File management and basic document assembly. Store files per matter, use templates for standard documents.
With Manage AI, Clio has added AI assistants that help with these operational tasks: summarising matters, drafting billing entries, suggesting document names, tidying contact records, and generating timeline summaries. These are useful quality-of-life improvements to an already solid practice management platform.
What Parachute does
Parachute handles the substantive legal work itself — the drafting, analysis, and advice that generates revenue for your firm:
AI-powered document drafting. Generate contracts, policies, and legal documents from 100+ templates or from scratch, drawing from your knowledge base and precedents. Three AI modes (Paralegal, Lawyer, Senior Associate) let you match depth to the task.
Multi-stage contract review. Upload a contract and get structured analysis: extracted obligations, risk scoring by severity, conflicts flagged against your knowledge base, and actionable recommendations. Not a summary — a full review workflow.
Legal advice and research. Ask questions in plain language and get answers grounded in legislation, regulations, and your firm's specific context. Cited sources so you can verify before relying on the output.
Knowledge base. Upload your precedents, standard clauses, company policies, and practice playbooks. Parachute uses this context across every interaction, making output specific to your firm rather than generic.
Collaborative editor. A purpose-built document editor with commenting, tagging, version control, and inline AI suggestions. Not a generic text box — a workspace designed for legal documents.
Side-by-side comparison
| Capability | Clio + Manage AI | Parachute |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Practice management (billing, CRM, calendar) | Legal work production (drafting, review, advice) |
| AI focus | Operational efficiency (summaries, billing drafts) | Substantive legal work (documents, contracts, advice) |
| Document drafting | Basic templates and document assembly | AI-powered drafting with 100+ templates, 3 AI modes |
| Contract review | Not a core feature | Multi-stage: obligations, risks, conflicts, recommendations |
| Knowledge base | Document storage per matter | AI-powered knowledge base that informs every response |
| Legal advice | Not available | Plain-language Q&A grounded in legislation and your context |
| Billing & time tracking | Core strength — industry-leading | Not a practice management tool |
| Client intake & CRM | Full pipeline management (Clio Grow) | Not a CRM |
| Collaborative editing | Basic document storage | Real-time editor with commenting, tagging, versioning |
| Word integration | Document sync | AI-powered Word add-in for drafting and review |
| Expert verification | Not available | Marketplace of qualified lawyers for professional sign-off |
| Pricing | From $49/user/mo (AI features on higher tiers) | Free plan; paid from $400/mo + GST |
Where Clio excels
Clio is the industry standard for practice management for good reason. If your firm doesn't have a system for billing, client intake, and matter management, Clio should be on your shortlist. Their strengths are clear:
Billing and payments. Clio's time tracking, invoicing, and payment processing are mature and reliable. Integration with accounting tools like QuickBooks and Xero makes financial management straightforward.
Client experience. Clio Grow handles intake forms, e-signatures, and client portals. For firms focused on improving the client acquisition pipeline, this is valuable infrastructure.
Ecosystem. With 250+ integrations and widespread adoption, Clio connects to most of the other tools law firms use. The ecosystem effect is real — if your accountant, your bank, and your document management system all connect to Clio, switching costs are high.
Manage AI for operations. The AI features Clio has added are genuinely useful for operational tasks: summarising a matter before a client call, drafting time entries from notes, cleaning up contact records. These save small amounts of time that compound across a busy practice.
Where Parachute excels
Parachute is built for the work that actually generates your firm's revenue — the drafting, review, and advice that clients pay for.
AI-native document production. Parachute doesn't bolt AI onto a document storage system. The entire platform is designed around AI-powered legal work. Drafting a commercial lease draws from your uploaded precedents, your preferred clause language, and relevant legislation. The output is a working first draft, not a generic starting point.
Contract review that goes beyond summarisation. Clio's AI can summarise a matter. Parachute's contract review is a structured, multi-stage workflow: obligation extraction, risk scoring by severity, conflicts flagged against your knowledge base, and actionable recommendations. It's the difference between "here's a summary" and "here are the five issues you need to address, ranked by priority."
Knowledge base that compounds. Every precedent, policy, and playbook you upload makes Parachute smarter about your firm. This isn't document storage — it's institutional knowledge that actively informs every AI interaction. A new associate using Parachute benefits from the firm's collective experience on day one.
Three AI modes for different tasks. Not every legal task needs the same depth of analysis. Parachute's three modes let you match the AI approach (and cost) to the task: quick research with Paralegal, standard work with Lawyer, complex analysis with Senior Associate.
They're complementary, not competing
The most effective tech stack for an SME law firm in 2026 likely includes both categories of tool:
Practice management (Clio, LEAP, Actionstep, or similar) for billing, time tracking, client intake, calendaring, and firm operations. This is your business infrastructure.
Legal AI platform (Parachute) for document drafting, contract review, legal advice, and knowledge management. This is your work production engine.
Think of it this way: Clio helps you run your firm. Parachute helps you do the work your firm gets paid for. Both matter, but they solve different problems.
Where firms go wrong is expecting practice management AI to do substantive legal work. Clio's Manage AI is excellent at making firm operations smoother. But it wasn't built to draft a shareholders agreement from your precedents, review a commercial lease against your risk framework, or give a client grounded legal advice on employment obligations.
What about Clio's AI for legal work?
Clio has signalled ambitions beyond practice management with AI, and they may build deeper legal work features over time. But as of 2026, their AI capabilities are focused on operational efficiency rather than substantive legal work production:
Matter summaries — useful for getting up to speed before a client call, but not a substitute for contract review or legal analysis.
Draft billing entries — a time-saver for end-of-day time entry, but not document drafting.
Document naming and organisation — helpful for file hygiene, but not knowledge management that informs AI output.
Timeline generation — valuable for litigation matters, but a narrow use case compared to a full legal work platform.
The gap between "AI that helps you manage a firm" and "AI that helps you do legal work" is significant. Both are valuable. They're just not the same thing.
Choosing the right investment
If you're evaluating where to invest your firm's AI budget, start with the bottleneck:
Your bottleneck is firm operations
If your biggest pain points are billing, time tracking, client intake, or matter organisation — you need better practice management. Clio is the market leader here, and their AI features make it even better.
Your bottleneck is legal work production
If your team spends too much time drafting documents, reviewing contracts, or producing client advice — you need a legal AI platform. Parachute is built specifically for this. Firms using Parachute are turning 2.5-hour tasks into 20 minutes.
You need both
Most growing firms do. The good news is that they work alongside each other. Use Clio (or your preferred practice management tool) for the business side. Use Parachute for the legal work. Your operations run smoother and your work product gets better.
Getting started with Parachute
If legal work production is where you need AI leverage:
1. Start free. Sign up at app.goparachute.ai and explore the full platform. No credit card, no sales calls. Your existing practice management setup stays exactly as it is.
2. Upload your knowledge base. Start with your most-used precedents and standard clauses. Even a handful of documents transforms Parachute's output from generic to firm-specific.
3. Run a real matter. Pick a current contract review, client advice, or document draft. Run it through Parachute and compare the output, time, and quality against your current process.
4. Scale from there. Add more team members, expand your knowledge base, and upgrade when you need more credits. Paid plans start at $400/month + GST.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Parachute alongside Clio?
Yes. They solve different problems and work alongside each other. Use Clio for practice management (billing, CRM, calendaring) and Parachute for legal work (drafting, review, advice). Many firms use a practice management tool alongside a legal AI platform.
Does Parachute replace my practice management software?
No. Parachute is not a practice management tool. It doesn't handle billing, time tracking, client intake, or calendaring. It handles the substantive legal work that generates your firm's revenue. Keep your practice management system for firm operations.
Is Clio's AI good enough for legal work?
Clio's AI is good at what it's designed for: operational efficiency within their practice management platform. For substantive legal work — drafting complex documents, structured contract review, legal advice grounded in your precedents — you need a tool built specifically for that purpose.
What if my firm is small and I can only afford one tool?
If you have to choose, ask where you lose the most time. If it's billing and admin, prioritise practice management. If it's drafting, review, and advice, start with Parachute's free plan — it costs nothing to explore and can save hours per week immediately.
How does pricing compare?
Clio starts at $49/user/month for basic practice management, with AI features on higher tiers ($89-$149/user/month). Parachute offers a free plan with access to the full platform, with paid plans from $400/month + GST. The tools serve different purposes, so the comparison isn't direct — it's about which bottleneck you're solving.