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The vast majority of lawyers would like to see their firm grow over the next three years. The majority agree that increasing revenue and extending their client base are the two most essential factors in creating that growth.

Two key questions:

• What stands in the way of an attorney wanting to extend his client base?
• How can they generate more revenue?

Your intake process is the stage of your law firm's marketing effort where you convert contacts into clients. It can be one, or it might take several steps before they become lead-worthy prospects for retention purposes. A bad start with this step could result in lost opportunities and an inability to turn more leads into retained clients. How best to prepare yourself, and what type of strategy has been found adequate by many firms across various practice areas?

Implementing an Effective Intake Process that Comes Full Circle

Today, attorneys are under more and more pressure than ever to really do it all, do it quickly and do it well. The majority of the industry comprises small to medium-size firms that require lawyers to do a lot more with a lot less. Lawyers are wearing many hats that a small business owner does while juggling with the work you like, which is practicing law and defending your clients. But you also deal with the tasks that must be done to manage the practice, which involves a lot of mundane tasks.

With limited hours and increasingly long days, that can be challenging for many lawyers.

It's no wonder that 76% of lawyers feel overworked, and nearly as many reports work beyond their regular business hours to keep everything up float. In 2019, lawyers across the United States averaged only 2.5 billable hours per day.

One of the most direct ways to expand your client base is to brush up on your ability to turn those potential clients into actual clients.

When considering that on average, 58% of clients who consult with a lawyer do not result in a hire, and 68% communicate with a lawyer that they didn't end up hiring. There is clearly an opportunity to capture more of that business that is already knocking at your door.

It's essential to have a good intake process. It will help you convert more leads and referrals into clients, crucial for any law firm trying to grow. Not all firms invest time or resources in developing an effective intake process. Still, it's worth the investment since consistent responses and engagement reflect well on your brand image as a professional firm that cares about client satisfaction.

Intake automation is one tool that law firms are using to improve their intake processes. Intake automation can help law firms utilize technology to streamline operational efficiency and increase retention rate, resulting in more satisfied clients and a better reputation.

Three fundamental values make an excellent intake process so efficient.

By offering potential clients open communication channels with direct access to you, you build up trust as soon as they reach out.

Every time you follow through and do what you say you will do, you will earn their trust every time you demonstrate to your potential clients that they are top of mind.

Regardless of whether you can help someone or not, these values will help your firm significantly strengthen its reputation.

Automating your intake process

You know how people say that the modern-day lawyer must wear many hats? Well, they're not kidding. Today's lawyers may be practicing law but are also constantly juggling administrative tasks to manage their practices and defend clients in court while wearing a slew of different hats-- it can feel overwhelming.

You might be wondering how you would automate your sales lead follow-up process and spend less time inputting contact info into databases just so it's available for future reference and quick contact.

When law firms contact potential clients, and how often. A legal intake CRM software is designed to organize your data and track all your potential clients. It will then use that information to send personalized follow-up emails, SMS, or drop voicemails for you - while still keeping a record of each interaction, so all the essential details are documented without a manual entry on your part.

This tool helps law firms reduce time spent on administrative work. Your staff is enabled to devote more time to focus their attention on more valuable tasks—giving attorneys back their valuable time at a moment when they need it the most.

Nine steps to automate your intake process

The speed at which you engage with your potential client is a critical factor in retaining more clients.

Engaging your leads within the first minute of being contacted increase your chance of getting hired by almost four hundred percent.

Not having a system to engage your leads outside of business hours could severely impact your growth.

Moreover, automating your law firm intake process will give you a significant competitive advantage.

What if your law firm could automate those tasks? It would free up time to focus on working with clients, expanding the size of your client base, and generating more revenue. 

So we've put together a complete guide you can use as a blueprint to implement your law firm intake automation system.

Step one: Know your intake workflow process and what to improve on.

Mapping and visualizing your existing process will allow you to identify potential pain points and areas where you can automate.

There are many different ways to define your intake process, so it is crucial to keep it as open as possible. For example, some people in your firm may refer to the entire process as "outreach." You may have more complex ways of defining how you work with prospects that many people don't.

After you've defined how your intake process should work, you should have a good idea of how to go about it. At this stage, you need to decide how to work with your prospective clients. It would be best if you had a framework of how you would like to convert a contact into a client. You should also have a target number of contacts you want to convert and a timeline you want to follow.

By doing so, you will be able to prioritize the time-consuming, error-prone, or critical tasks for your business growth and identify the technology you need to implement the right automated intake system for your firm.

Step two: Centralize all your inquiries in 1 system and away from your inbox.

Whether you are getting potential client inquiries through calls and voicemails, webform submission, Martindale, PPC, or Facebook advertising, or you receive leads from your website, make sure all these contacts are centralized in one system. Leverage tools like Zapier and Mailparser to parse your data to your legal CRM. It will help you save a ton of time and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Finally, build an online intake form you can provide to your reception or answering service.

Doing so will allow you to maintain your intake data quality and segment your contact list by marketing source or practice area, making it easy to filter through your contacts and easily follow up on the right people.

Step three: Engage with your potential quickly and automatically.

When engaging potential clients, it is essential to open as many communication channels as possible. Email and phone are crucial, but make sure to include SMS as your primary method of communication.

SMS is the most effective channel of communication, yet the least utilized by law firms to communicate with potential clients. SMS will allow for open communication, build trust and strengthen your reputation while giving you a solid competitive advantage.

Law firms can use SMS to greet potential clients, even after hours, so you always stay top of mind; it's also highly effective to send reminders for upcoming appointments, allowing them to reschedule or cancel and avoid no-shows.

SMS can also be used to respond to potential clients who have a quick question about your practice or refer them to someone else if you can't help them. When using these channels, adopt a toe that's genuine and sincere. Here are a few ideas of text you can use to engage your leads:

"Hi John, this is James, an attorney with Mulligan Law. I'm interested to learn more about your family law situation. Do you have time for a free consultation in the next few days?"

"Hi John, thank you for contacting Mulligan Law. Due to the time, can I please ask you to complete this short form so I can point you in the right direction at our firm very quickly?"

SMS is not the only communication channel you should be using, but it's very effective. Make sure to cover all your bases and also follow up with an email. An average of 10% of potential clients will prefer to interact via email, or some will provide you with a landline that is not SMS enabled. You can also use SMS to request payments.

Finally, What's App is another channel you can leverage to connect and engage with your potential clients automatically.

Step three: Allow for potential clients to self-schedule appointments.

Adopting an automated appointment setting solution can be very effective for law firms, allowing them to free up time and resources previously spent on follow-up phone calls or emails.

Lawyers who invest in this technology will see a reduction in no-shows thanks to SMS reminders sent when clients schedule online. They'll also benefit from having their calendar data synced with their CRM systems so they may book better quality consultations by understanding each client's availability before reaching out to confirm initial meetings.

Whether you are offering free case evaluations or paid consultations, Allowing clients to self-schedule time in your team's calendar will not only free up your resources but also help you speak to more people in less time. The more people you can talk with, the more clients you will retain.

Having automated appointment scheduling in place will help you cut down the time spent setting appointments and follow-ups while also giving your potential clients more control over their schedules. Empowering your potential clients to schedule a time to speak with someone in your firm will reinforce their perception that they are essential to you because you are willing to get their questions answered.

Law firms who implemented automated scheduling see, on average, over seventy-two percent increase in consultations and talk with potential clients.

When implementing a scheduling system, allow for online payment integrations and test the cadence of reminder messages through text and email to minimize no-show and help the potential client cancel if they need to.

Step four: Build your follow-up sequences.

A client that engages with your law firm is already interested in learning more about you. Automating your follow-up is a critical step of your intake process.

Follow-up is a significant step, as it can be the difference between retaining or losing your potential client. Having automated follow-ups in place keeps top of mind and builds trust with your clients while avoiding no-shows and maximizing retention.

While it is widely very different from a person to another, the optimal follow-up touches to convert an inquiry into a consultation is at least six times:

Based on the Lawprocess data, we see that 6% to 8% of new clients law firms retain initially inquired four months or more before becoming a client. It is reasonable to sporadically follow up with potential clients for up to 6 months.

Consider building multiple sequences based upon previous responses and intent type.

Step five: Prioritize your potential clients upstream

Technology allows you to easily collect valuable information about your potential as soon as they reach out. People feel more comfortable giving you information gradually, rather than filling out a long-form

A great way to collect potential client information and qualify upstream is to engage them via SMS and email first and ask them to provide you with more information by sending them an online survey with basic conditional logic. A short survey will help you prioritize your potential clients and understand what they are looking for to plan out your automated answers accordingly.

This approach allows you to quickly identify the most valuable cases and provide an excellent opportunity to engage potential clients. Still, it will also help you gain reputation by pointing people you can't help in the right direction.

Remember that it is crucial to maintain a consistent cadence of outbound messages to maximize your retention rate to ensure your potential clients do not forget about you. For example:

"Hi, I'm still interested to see if we can help you with your injury situation. If you can complete this short survey, I can point you in the right direction very quickly ."

Most software offers features that can help you segment your database to help you segment your database using custom fields or tags. Still, For this approach to work, however, you'll need a robust Intake Management System.

Step six: Automate post-consult follow-up.

If you want to scale and automate your law firm efficiently, this step will be critical for you.

There are many reasons why a potential client might not be ready to hire you after the initial consultation. That's why it's crucial to follow up with them after the talk consistently. For example, set up a simple text follow up like this:

"Hi Rick, Thanks for meeting with me. I look forward to representing you and getting a fair resolution. Do you have any more questions? Just reply to this text. If you want to proceed, let me know, and I'll send you the agreement."

This is where many law firms are letting opportunities slip through the crack, so follow-up with them every two days for the first week, then progressively reduce the cadence until fourteen weeks after the consult if they haven't responded or said no. You can conclude with something like this:

"One last follow-up. I'm checking in to see if you have any more questions. As I mentioned, I think you have a good reason to proceed, and we should get started as soon as possible. Let me know if you're ready to start or if you still have any questions."

Step seven: Automate the retainer agreement generation.

If you have one or ten different retainer agreement templates, automating sending these agreements is essential for having an efficient automated intake in place.

There are many e-signature solutions available you can use and integrate with your intake form to generate your agreement and populate the correct information automatically. Once implemented correctly, this process will save you and your team valuable time and help you avoid common mistakes. It will also improve your client experience. Set up automated reminders every two days for up to two weeks.

Step eight: Automate contact and matter creation in your practice management system:

A practice management system is an entirely different beast than an intake management system, so while considering what is best for you, I'd recommend selecting open and connected solutions as long as the system allows you to pass data in automatically and out.

Once a retainer agreement is signed, automating the matter/project creation in your practice management system is another critical step you can quickly implement to streamline your operational efficiencies and avoid duplication of data entry.

Step ten: Ensure that all of your team members are on board with the new automated system.

Last but not least, user adoption is crucial to ensuring that all team members are on board and ready for the new automated Intake Management System. Please make sure everyone is comfortable using your intake management system, as they must understand how everything works together.

I'd recommend designating a power user who can be the main point of contact to answer questions internally or interact with a technology provider.

Creating simple SOP's can also enable new staff members to adopt your law firm intake automation system.

Conclusion

Our legal industry is in a constant state of change, so your business has to be too. Automating your intake process and taking the necessary steps to follow up with clients will make your business more efficient and profitable.

Review these steps and consider them when you are ready to implement an intake automation system to make the most of your intake process. With a streamlined intake process, you can increase your firm's effectiveness and the number of clients it can serve.

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