Welcome back to our new miniseries Vertical SaaS: Fintech Disruption by a Thousand Cuts, sponsored by our friends at Pipe.

In episode 4, we attempt to tackle the age-old question: build, buy, or partner? 

Hosts Alex Johnson and Luke Voiles (CEO of Pipe) sit down with A.J. Axelrod, VP Payments & Financial Services at Clio) to explore how Clio’s uniquely designed to handle the unique complexities that lawyers face every day.

Clio is a vSaaS operating system for lawyers, and A.J. (extremely) thoughtfully walks us through how Clio decided what to build, what to buy, and when to partner.

Spoiler: legal-specific finance is a different beast —every transfer has to be auditable, or you’ll have a compliance failure (and lawyers, famously, read the fine print!).

Payments started as integrations and evolved into Clio Payments, now with support for cards, ACH, wallets, QR codes, and text-to-pay, all tied into legal accounting requirements.

This episode is a front-row seat to what fintech strategy really looks like when it’s built for the people doing the work. 

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Thanks for listening! 

This episode was brought to you by Pipe. Pipe helps vertical SaaS platforms unlock fast, flexible capital, right inside their product. Learn more at pipe.com/fintechtakes.

Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Follow Luke:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-voiles/

Follow A.J.:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaxelrod/

Learn more about Pipe here.