Bessemer Venture Partners leads round as the firm invests deeper in vertical SaaS market; funding to drive aggressive growth

Clio www.clio.com, the most comprehensive cloud-based practice management platform for the legal industry, announced that it raised $20 million in Series C financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Over the next 12 months, Clio will use the new funding to accelerate product development and sales, and fuel international expansion. The Series C funding brings total capital raised to $27 million.

As the vertical SaaS market takes shape, this investment is another proof point that cloud tech is hitting the tipping point of broad adoption by traditional industries like legal. Over 80% of lawyers in the U.S. practice at firms of less than 10 employees; these small firms rely on Clio to automate time-consuming administrative tasks, which allows them to focus on their core business.

Increasingly, we see SaaS companies strike gold by providing specialized solutions tailored to a specific vertical rather than going for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ enterprise software,” said Trevor Oelschig, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “This investment in Clio furthers our strategy to find best-of-breed vertical solutions. Clio has already shown incredible traction in the legal space and demonstrated a deep understanding of how to tangibly improve the day-to-day workflow for lawyers.”

Over the next 12 months, the company plans on doubling its headcount to more than 200. This includes aggressive growth in Clio’s new North American sales office in Toronto, as well as new sales and support hires in Europe, where they recently opened a data centre in Dublin. The company recently released an iPhone application and will continue to aggressively invest in mobile. Clio is also introducing features to improve collaboration and efficiency.

“We offer our customers one of life’s most precious resources: time,” said Jack Newton, CEO and founder, Clio. “We’ve found that our users save an average of eight hours per week, giving them more time to spend on life outside of work. This funding will allow us to further our reach and hone our product to continue to help lawyers focus on the parts of their business they enjoy.”

With the help of the cloud, Clio eases the process of practice management, billing, time tracking, and collaboration for law firms. There are no expensive servers to buy or rent and no need for technical staff to customize or maintain the software. Clio customers enjoy a seamless and secure experience whether accessing their account from a phone, tablet, or computer.

The $20 million C round included follow-on investment from Acton Capital Partners and Point Nine Capital, as well as new investment from Version One Ventures.

First launched in 2009, Clio has legal professionals in 50 countries using the service.