One thing every lawyer knows is needed for a strong and growing law firm is an effective and dedicated intake department. As the primary contact between your firm and the public, the intake department is in many ways the first impression that someone will have of your firm beyond the marketing they see. On top of that, intake team members need to be trained to answer every question that doesn’t rise to the level of an attorney. That level of responsibility means that your intake has to be as streamlined and high-functioning as possible.
That’s why any law firm seeking an improved intake department should seek out consulting services like the kind offered by Brain Trust Legal. Law firms often can’t see the issues they are suffering from; as the expression goes, ‘you can’t read the label from inside the jar.’ Having an experienced outside perspective from someone who has successfully done what you want is the ideal way to achieve your goals. Listed below are just a few of the insights and advantages you can gain from the BTL consulting program.
The most important takeaway from this question is that you absolutely should have a follow-up or chase sequence for potential clients you spoke with but did not sign. Especially now that so many forms of contact such as emails and texting can be automated by a case management system, a law firm would be crazy not to have some kind of follow-up system in place.For those firms who already have one, however, the question often arises: should it be three days? Seven days? A month? Is there an ideal amount of time worth reaching back out to a potential client?
Ideally, your follow-up sequence would definitely not be shorter than three days; many potential clients may not have even made up their minds in that window, so you wouldn’t want to give up earlier than that. On the other end of the spectrum, sending follow-ups after two weeks can get annoying to the client and move past a reminder into harassment. Ideally, a window of 7 to 10 days is best, with the earlier days having multiple attempts through texts and calls and later days reducing to single attempts from each method.
However, as you finish out your follow-up cycle, it’s important to identify the final attempts. By simply saying “we will stop sending you messages” in your final attempt, that may be the motivating element that finally makes a potential client reach out because they think they won’t get another chance or reminder.
There are many law firms who have an in-house intake department of a few team members who work normal business hours, with the hours outside of normal business are either handled by an out-of-office team or there is simply no one answering calls. The ideal is to have someone available 24/7 to answer potential client calls, but who should handle those? Should it be team members of your law firm, or should it be a company or call center that handles it for you?
There are obviously some great things that come with having a call center company handle calls for you. They have a large team which means constant coverage of the calls, and they may also have added bonus options for things like answering texts or chats and messaging from platforms like Google Business Profile and Local Service Ads (LSAs), things that your team might not have the bandwidth to handle.
However, no one will ever know more about your firm or work harder to close a potential client than a dedicated team member. Working with an outside vendor means the employees are theirs ultimately, not yours. Keeping as much of the intake process in-house is the ideal, and there are great ways to do that using modern technology and opening your firm up to remote team members.
One of the biggest mistakes that law firms make is reaching someone through a specific communication method and then trying to get them to switch to a different one that is easier for the law firm. For instance, you might run an ad on Google, which is text-based, but then you only give them the option to call your law firm. If they were using Google because they’re more comfortable with written communication, they may not contact you at all.
That’s why it’s important to provide potential clients with their chosen method of communication if it is possible. On Local Service Ads (LSAs), potential clients have the option to send the advertiser a written message. If they choose that option, your intake department should be willing to start and complete that exchange in that format if that’s what the potential client prefers. By allowing for this, you will see the number of client exchanges and signed cases rise.
In the same way that your intake department should feel familiar, real, and individualized from every other firm, so should the help you receive to improve your law firm. Your intake department has specific needs and growth requirements that don’t fit with every other firm like a cookie cutter. That’s why the Brain Trust Legal consulting program is ideal for your firm. Using a hands-on approach to finding and diagnosing the issues in your intake department (and your entire law firm), the BTL team uses the shared 50+ years of law firm success from co-founders Rob Levine and Darryl Isaacs to create and implement the solutions you need.
In a rapidly growing technological arena like intake, there are constant changes, updates, and improvements you want to make to your department to ensure continued and growing success. Brain Trust Legal consulting can provide the edge you need. To learn more, you can call (855)743-1636 from anywhere across the U.S. to speak with a BTL team member and find out what our team can do for you.
