Clio Duo (now Manage AI) alternative: when a separate drafting workspace makes sense

What Clio Duo (now Manage AI) is

Clio Duo is the AI assistant Clio built into Clio Manage, its practice-management platform, and Clio now calls it Manage AI. Clio's help center explains the change in an article whose web address reads "Manage AI: The Evolution of Clio Duo"; when we checked it on October 28, 2026, the article was titled AI Features in Clio Manage.

That page says that from an AI launchpad in Clio Manage you can schedule events from documents, automate bills, analyze your documents, ask questions about matters and firm operations, create time entries, expenses, tasks and events, catch up on a matter, and get writing help for emails and other documents. It also describes an AI event log that records AI actions over the last 90 days, and a setting that lets an administrator turn AI off for the whole firm.

For history: Clio first released Clio Duo inside Clio Manage in October 2024, as LawNext reported at the time. Rely on Clio's current help page, not that launch coverage, for what it does today.

When we checked Clio's pricing page on October 28, 2026, Starter was listed "starting at $49/user", Core, Signature and Elite showed "Get pricing", AI was described as included on Core and above, and Clio Work, Clio's research and drafting product, was a separate add-on. Clio offers a free trial. Check the page yourself: packaging changes.

Where Clio is stronger

• It lives in your system of record. If your matters, contacts, time, bills and calendar are in Clio, an assistant that can read and act on them inside Clio saves switching tools. Draftiro cannot create a bill or a task in Clio.
• Practice management. Billing, accounting, payments, intake and client communication are Clio's core. Draftiro is not a practice-management system.
• Court-rules calendaring. Clio's calendaring page says that on select plans you pick a jurisdiction and a trigger date and court rules add the related deadlines. Draftiro has no court-rules deadline calculator.
• Scale and paperwork. Clio says on its about page that more than 400,000 legal professionals use it, and its security page says it completes annual SOC 2 Type II examinations. Draftiro does not hold a SOC 2 report.

Where Draftiro fits instead

• Answers from the matter's documents, with the passages. Upload a matter's PDFs, Word and text files and ask about them. When Draftiro finds support, the answer shows numbered sources, and you open each to read the exact passage. See answers from your case files.
• Drafting from the record. Draft letters, motion sections and summaries from the matter's files; each draft lists the sources it used and exports to Word (.docx). See demand letters and motion drafting.
• Citations flagged, not vouched for. Citations in answers are flagged for you to verify before filing, with a look-up link.
• A published, lower entry price. Draftiro Starter is $29 a month and Solo is $99 a month, after a 14-day trial with no card. See pricing.

Running both

Many solos will keep Clio for the ledger and the calendar. Draftiro has no Clio integration, so the workflow is manual: export or download the documents you need from Clio (PDF or .docx), create the matter in Draftiro, upload them, and keep billing and deadlines in Clio. Draftiro creates draft AI-assisted time entries inside Draftiro for your review; it does not send them to Clio, so log billable time in Clio as you do now.

How to decide in a week

1. Pick one closed or public matter with a handful of documents.
2. Ask both tools the same five questions you would ask a junior associate about that matter.
3. For each answer, check whether you can open the supporting passage and whether it says what the answer claims.
4. Ask each for the same first draft of a letter and count the corrections you make.
5. Compare the monthly cost of the plan you would actually need, not the entry price.

Whatever you choose, ABA Formal Opinion 512 applies the same duties to both tools: understand what the tool can get wrong, protect client confidences, supervise its output and bill honestly for the time you spend.

Last checked October 28, 2026. Competitor details come from Clio's own pages linked above and listed under the sources below; tell us at support@draftiro.com if anything here is out of date and we will correct it.