The Clio Work Certified Expert program is a self-paced certification on Clio Academy that builds your ability to use Clio Work in everyday legal practice. You complete a foundational learning path, choose a track for your area of law, pass an open-book exam, and earn a shareable digital badge that signals proven, applied Clio Work expertise to clients, colleagues, and the wider legal community.
Who can earn the certification?
Certification is open to all Clio Work customers. The program supports both the people who do the casework and the people who run the rollout, and many users do both:
- Lawyers apply Clio Work across core legal tasks, from surfacing the key points in complex documents to running litigation and transactional workflows.
- Paralegals carry the heaviest document load, summarizing filings and transcripts, extracting consistent data across large productions, and preparing structured material for the lawyers they support.
- Operations and administration specialists lead adoption, assess firm readiness, train staff, and optimize how matters move across the Clio ecosystem.
How the program works
The program is self-paced and runs entirely on Clio Academy. You move through it in four stages:
- Register for Clio Academy and open the Catalog.
- Complete the Clio Work Certified Expert: Fundamentals learning path, which everyone takes first.
- Choose the practice track that matches your work, Transactional or Litigation, then complete it. Take both if your firm works across deals and disputes.
- Pass the certification exam to earn your badge.
The exam is open-book and scenario-based, so it tests whether you can apply Clio Work to realistic situations rather than recall facts about it. Short quizzes throughout each learning path show the correct answer with a brief explanation, so you practice the thinking the exam asks for before you reach it.
What each learning path covers
The program has three learning paths. Everyone starts with Fundamentals, then completes the practice track that fits their work. You will need to login to Clio Academy to view the learning paths.
- Fundamentals builds the groundwork: where AI fits in legal practice, the ethics and client-confidentiality rules that govern its use, a guided tour of Clio Work, and core skills such as prompting and the built-in workflows.
- Transactional follows a deal from first draft to closing: drafting and redlining contracts, summarizing long agreements, running due diligence across a data room, managing deal timelines, and drafting client communications.
- Litigation follows a case from first argument to settlement: building arguments with supporting authority, legal research, summarizing filings and transcripts, discovery and document review, hearing and deposition prep, and settlement analysis.
For the full module list and current time estimates, see the program on Clio Academy.
Earn your badge
When you pass the exam, you earn a verified digital badge issued through Credly. Add it to your LinkedIn profile, email signature, or firm bio to show clients and colleagues that your Clio Work skills are verified. Your badge does not expire, but Clio Academy regularly adds new courses and updates content, so check back to keep your skills current as Clio Work evolves.
Note: The Fundamentals path covers using AI responsibly, including what client information you can run through Vincent, how to verify AI output before you rely on it, and how to talk to clients about AI use.
Tip: You can register, enroll, and find the full course catalog on Clio Academy. If you indicate interest in Clio Work when you sign up, you are enrolled in the learning paths automatically.