Clio acquires UK-based ShareDo to move into serving large law firms, fuel global expansion

Burnaby, BC-based Clio has acquired fellow legaltech company ShareDo, of Manchester, United Kingdom (UK), to accelerate its expansion upmarket and begin serving large law firms.

The strategic deal, which Clio funded using a combination of cash, stock, and debt, closed this month. Clio co-founder and CEO Jack Newton declined to disclose the purchase price, or any other financial details, beyond claiming that the transaction is the biggest of Clio’s five acquisitions to date in terms of both the amount it paid and ShareDo’s employee count.

Clio confirmed to BetaKit that the company’s previous largest acquisition was Lawyaw, which it purchased in 2021 for an undisclosed sum in the mid-eight-figure range.

ShareDo enables Clio’s expansion into the enterprise legal market ahead of schedule.

For Clio, which has established a presence selling legal practice management software to solo lawyers as well as small and mid-market law firms, ShareDo hastens its entry into the enterprise legal market, which Newton defined as law firms with 1,000 or more staff and a global presence.

“We saw an opportunity through this acquisition to really unlock that enterprise opportunity for Clio” and cater to law firms of all sizes, Newton told BetaKit in an interview.

ShareDo’s entire 70-person team is joining Clio, and ShareDo founder and CEO Ben Nicholson is transitioning to general manager of ShareDo, where he will continue to guide the company and help oversee the gradual integration of ShareDo and Clio’s business and technology.

This deal comes nearly eight months after Clio raised the largest software funding round in Canadian tech history. In July 2024, Clio closed a $900-million USD (then $1.24-billion CAD) Series F at a more than $4-billion CAD valuation, making it one of Canada’s highest-valued tech startups and, according to Clio, the world’s most valuable cloud-based legaltech company.

That financing, which was “substantially secondary,” followed Clio surpassing $200 million USD in annual recurring revenue (ARR) after doubling its sales in just two years, since hitting $100 million in ARR in 2022. Today, Clio confirmed that the company is generating more than $250 million USD in ARR from over 150,000 individual users. Clio and ShareDo are both profitable, Clio claims.

ShareDo sells legal case management software to over 40 large law firms, which collectively employ approximately 13,000 legal professionals. Newton said this group includes dozens of the UK’s largest law firms, as well as clients across six other countries.

ShareDo was initially bootstrapped before taking on “a small amount” of venture capital funding in 2018 from Sussex Place Ventures, which is associated with the London Business School. The company was in the process of fundraising to support its expansion into North America when conversations with Clio began.

Newton said Clio has long hoped to expand to large law firms, “a very significant and important segment of the legal market.” The CEO noted that enterprise clients have discrete needs relative to the small and medium-sized legal businesses Clio has largely focused on to date.

“This is a brand new segment for us,” Newton said.

Clio’s merger and acquisition (M&A) strategy is closely tied to the company’s product roadmap. As Newton has previously told BetaKit, the legaltech business continually evaluates whether it makes the most sense to build, buy, or partner to deliver various components of the plan.

With the acquisition of ShareDo, Newton said he saw a chance for Clio to “leapfrog” ahead dramatically and expand into the enterprise market “five years or more” ahead of schedule.

Nicholson told BetaKit that ShareDo was attracted to Clio’s “investment and growth mindset,” adding that “joining Clio felt like unlocking the cheat code to fast-track our impact.”

Newton thinks Clio could be “the acquirer of choice in legaltech.”

“With their extensive resources, expertise, and global reach, we have the opportunity to level up rapidly, bringing our solutions to a wider audience and delivering even greater value to the legal industry,” Nicholson said.

Newton said that ShareDo has “a good overlap” with the countries where Clio has been seeing success. “It helps really buttress our international expansion efforts,” he said.

At the moment, ShareDo has no presence in the United States—the world’s largest legal market—which Newton sees as “a major expansion opportunity.”

Newton anticipates that Clio will remain active in the M&A space going forward. He thinks the current scale of Clio’s platform puts the company in a good position to be “the acquirer of choice in legaltech,” and sees more opportunity given the “explosion of innovation” happening right now across the sector.

Feature image courtesy Clio.