Clio is the best known practice platform in Canada. It is built for law firms in general, which is exactly why immigration work needs something else beside it.
Checked on 25 September 2026 against their own public pages. Software changes. If we have something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Clio is a Canadian company selling legal practice management to firms of every kind, with billing, accounting, a client portal and document management, and it lists immigration as one of many practice areas it serves. Their Canadian pricing page shows a Starter plan at $69 per user a month CAD, with Core, Signature and Elite above it and a free trial offered.
What it does not do is the immigration specific work. Nothing on the pricing page describes filling IRCC forms, watching IRCC policy or handling the federal portals, because that is not what the product is for.
Source: www.clio.com/ca/
| Meridian | Clio | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Canadian immigration practices only | Law firms of every practice area |
| Published price | $99, $249 and $499 a month in CAD, for the firm | Starter $69 per user a month CAD, higher tiers not shown on the page we read |
| IRCC forms | 190 plus forms filled from the case file | Not described. Immigration is listed as a practice area, not as form automation |
| The IRCC portals | A Chrome extension for GCKey, the Authorized Paid Representatives Portal, the PR Portal and citizenship | Not described |
| Policy watching | Intelligence, more than forty sources, Express Entry forecasting | Not described |
| Signing | Signet, built in, no fee per signature | Available in the platform |
| Trust accounting and billing | Invoicing and case financials | Deep, and a genuine strength |
| Mobile | Aurora on iOS and Android | Yes |
| Ecosystem | One system, nothing to integrate | Very large integration marketplace |
Clio is a serious product with a long track record, deep billing and trust accounting, a large integration marketplace and a support organisation far bigger than ours. For a mixed practice doing litigation, real estate and some immigration, it is a reasonable centre of gravity.
It is also Canadian, which matters to firms thinking about where their records live.
If your firm already runs on Clio and only a slice of the work is immigration, the honest answer may be to stay and add what is missing rather than to move everything.
Meridian only does immigration, so the case file is shaped like an immigration matter rather than a generic one. Forms, portals, policy, document requests and deadlines all assume IRCC.
The hours a general platform leaves on your desk, typing IMM forms and retyping the same answers into the portals, are the hours we are built to remove.
Pricing is per firm rather than per user, so adding an assistant does not change the bill by another seat.
Policy intelligence is included. No general platform will tell you that a program change touches four of your live files.
We could not read the prices for the Core, Signature and Elite tiers, or confirm which Canadian region hosts customer data. Both are worth asking, especially the hosting question if data residency matters to your clients.
No. It is legal practice management sold to firms of every kind, and it lists immigration among the practice areas it serves. There is no IRCC form filling described on its public pages.
Yes, and some do, keeping billing and general matters in a broad platform while the immigration files live in a system that knows what an IMM form is. Ask both vendors what the handover looks like before you commit to running two.
Clio publishes $69 per user a month CAD for Starter, so a firm of four is paying for four seats. Meridian is priced per firm, $99 a month for a solo and $249 for three staff. Compare them at your real headcount, not at one user.
Yes, Clio is a Canadian company. Being Canadian and hosting your data in Canada are two different questions though, so ask the second one separately.
A short walkthrough of an actual file, once we open to new firms.