Case Study: California Innocence Project achieves streamlined case management and expanded pro bono impact with Clio

How the California Innocence Project Is Changing Lives with Clio

The California Innocence Project (CIP) is a San Diego–based law school clinic that provides free legal services to wrongfully convicted people, trains law students, and advocates for systemic reform. With 42 staff and hundreds of volunteers handling more than 2,500 new inquiries and roughly 6,000 communications a year, CIP needed a reliable, centralized system to track thousands of contacts, long-running cases, evidence, and frequent volunteer turnover after struggling with a bulky, crash-prone legacy system.

By switching to Clio (including a 2014 data migration of 23,116 contacts and donated licenses), CIP gained searchable contact management, conflict checks, case feeds, mobile access, individual intern logins, and paperless storage—streamlining intake, supervision, and remote work. The result: easier onboarding, clearer oversight of 400+ screening attorneys and dozens of interns, a growing database now over 30,000 contacts, and improved capacity to secure exonerations and pursue policy reforms that amplify CIP’s impact.

California Innocence Project

Michael Semanchik

Managing Attorney