Ridgeline Integrations

The Problem#

• Ridgeline is a two-person software consultancy building plugins for the Clio App Directory, serving US probate law firms
• Their clients want Clio data to interoperate with court filing portals, financial advisers, and estate beneficiaries
• Every integration is custom: one-off scripts mapping Clio’s Contacts and Matters to whatever format the destination expects
• There is no standard format for estate data, so every integration starts from scratch
• Each custom integration takes weeks of development for a single client

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Ridgeline builds a “Clio to INHERIT” plugin for the Clio App Directory, reading Clio’s Contact entities (mapping to person.json via givenName, familyName, dateOfBirth, addresses[]) and Matter entities (mapping to estate.json via custom fields)
• Clio’s 13 preconfigured Wills & Estates Custom Field Sets map to executor.json, bequest.json, property.json, asset.json, and liability.json
• The plugin uses Clio’s OAuth 2.0 API with the INHERIT integration guide as the field-level mapping reference
• conformance-declaration.json declares the plugin’s conformance level and validator details
• The us-estate extension handles US-specific fields such as state-level probate variations and federal estate tax thresholds

The Integration#

• Export: the plugin generates a validated INHERIT JSON document from a Clio Matter, downloadable or pushable to an API endpoint
• Import: the plugin accepts an INHERIT document and creates or updates Clio Contacts, Matter, and Custom Fields
• Ridgeline charges Clio firms a monthly subscription via the App Directory

The Business Case#

• The Clio App Directory has 250+ apps serving 150,000+ users
• Ridgeline estimates 200 paying firms at $29/month within the first year — $69,600 ARR from a plugin built on top of a free, open standard
• For probate firms, the plugin eliminates 4–8 hours of re-keying per estate handover
• A single standard mapping means Ridgeline maintains one codebase instead of dozens of bespoke scripts

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. A probate firm asks Ridgeline to export estate data from Clio to a financial adviser’s portal
2. Ridgeline spends two weeks writing a custom mapping script for that specific destination format
3. Another firm wants the same thing but with a different destination — another two weeks, another script
4. Ridgeline maintains a growing pile of bespoke integrations, each breaking when the destination changes its format

With INHERIT:

1. Ridgeline builds the Clio-to-INHERIT mapping once and lists it on the Clio App Directory
2. Any probate firm installs the plugin and exports estate data as validated INHERIT JSON
3. The destination system (financial adviser, court portal, beneficiary) imports the standard format
4. Ridgeline maintains one plugin, sells to hundreds of firms, and earns recurring revenue