Legal Soft Solution is excited to meet you at 35th Annual AILA California Chapters Conference & Webcast on November 10-12 | Learn More
Menu
Legal Soft Solution is excited to meet you at 35th Annual AILA California Chapters Conference & Webcast on November 10-12 | Learn More
Which person is most important in your law firm? And what does that important person do for your law firm? I’m sure you’re thinking something along those lines. The most valuable person is an attorney. After all, a law company isn’t complete without an attorney providing legal advice, working on cases, and representing clients in court. While these are all revenue-generating activities, I’d like to challenge your perspective on the MOST crucial function to nail at your company. You wouldn’t have any client concerns to work on if you didn’t have this VIP. Let’s deep dive on what are the essential reasons why you must hire an intake specialist, and how Legal Soft Solution can help you with what you need!
An intake specialist is responsible for converting all incoming leads into paying clients and ensuring complete client satisfaction. Your intake process needs to be handled by a professional to convert leads into paying clients. Whether a lawyer operates a firm, practices as a solo practitioner, or has offices in multiple cities, each spends money on marketing. The money spent on advertising the services on the internet, through television, in newspapers, and on large hoardings in a particular city will be in vain if the right person fails to take incoming calls from clients due to marketing expenditures. Also, tracking visitors who contact your website through live chat and contact forms is a smart move. Keeping track of your marketing budget and figuring out what works best for your facility is much easier with the help of an intake expert. Consider how a potential client would reach out to your legal company. When clients contact you, does your staff respond to their questions and forward their calls to the appropriate department? Do your attorneys generally respond to emails within a reasonable amount of time? Which marketing efforts generated the leads?
The intake expert’s job is not limited to working hours. They are available even when you are not working. As a lawyer, you won’t have time to work around the clock no matter how hard you try and how many more hours you work as overtime. After all, it won’t be fun working late into the night if you’re still on call. You can’t burden your receptionist with hundreds of calls. Often, the client reaches you in the case of an emergency, and it could be at midnight.
For instance, if a firm’s operations are in the personal injury law, then there are good chances that your phone will keep ringing the entire night, and you need to respond to them. So how would you calm them down when you answer their phone? The intake expert is a specialist to deal with this situation since they have a good amount of legal knowledge. During the conversation with a client, they will understand what the case is all about and whether it fits the firm’s offering, depending on the conversation.
A law firm that employs legal intake also has the advantage of having real people handle it rather than just using a voicemail system. Voicemail is a cost-effective approach but not suitable for someone looking for a person to understand their trouble. For urgent situations, voicemail will not work, and the firm may lose the potential client. The potential clients want the assurance that their case can be handled, and this assurance can be given only by a live person and not robots. There is nothing more frustrating for a person than to wait 24 hours to hear back from you after being in a car accident or facing another legal scenario. By being able to contact a live person, your reputation will get a boost. Though technology has changed the way things used to be done, and law is not an exception. Still, at the same, it would be damaging if firms underestimate the impact of conversation with real people and acquire data from it.
A receptionist or other legal professional can only receive calls during office hours and reply to communications from clients. A voicemail can only be left after the staff has gone home, and the client will receive a call back the next day. The result is that they need to continue to search for an attorney who can handle their case. Taking on expert cases does not only take place during regular business hours. The service of the intake team goes above and beyond by responding to calls 24/7, 365 days a year. Intake professionals are available at all times, including weekends and holidays, to support your potential clients whenever they need it.
A well-trained intake expert can help you. Due to a lack of training, your receptionist handling client intake will most likely miss out on many opportunities to nurture and convert leads. An intake expert will help you achieve your revenue targets. Hiring a legal intake company can expertly handle your client’s needs.
You will lose clients easily if you do not answer the phone or do not respond immediately. The likelihood that a client will contact another law firm increases when they send them to voicemail or return their calls. Put investment into hiring intake experts instead of letting this happen. It will ensure your clients always have access to someone. It is important to greet and inquire about your clients frequently. Many law firms provide the lawyers with the firm’s cell phones so that intake specialists can help clients & potential clients connect with the lawyers and ensure leads are managed efficiently. Intake experts make sure that calls are answered promptly, and that the caller does not have to wait for four-five rings. This will help you avoid waiting forever on hold. Other leads generated through lead generation services, such as email leads and live chat leads, are also treated as urgently as possible by intake experts. Keeping in touch with the potential client is an excellent idea. Intake experts do this quite well, so they know you’re prepared to discuss their case with them.
When your lead generation efforts result in a significant volume of phone calls and web inquiries, you need more than a dedicated receptionist to assist your clients. In that case, you risk losing prospects, who will call around until they find a competitor that suits their needs. A qualified expert will handle every contact you receive. Through optimized intake procedures, new clients are screened and qualified as soon as possible. Informing your potential clients about your firm and its procedures will still be confident in them and ease their concerns about looming legal issues. Having confidence in your firm’s ability to help your clients resolve their legal problems will make them less likely to look elsewhere.
The legal intake experts know how to empathize with the situation. They amicably collect all the needed information and furnish the same to the attorneys, which can be very helpful to simplify the case and assist potential clients. Along with gathering the required information, a legal expert is also determining the financial ability of the client to hire an attorney and pay other charges related to the case. An intake expert will arrange the cases logically. This will help the firm focus only on the feasible cases and not waste time on the cases that don’t fit the firm’s requirements. Clients always appreciate it if someone from the firm can tell them right away if they’re the right person to represent them. If the firm can’t take the urgent case of the client, then an intake expert refers them to some other firm that is suited best for their urgent requirements. This will help to build a good reputation and trust. Since legal issues are very time-sensitive and involve high costs, no one wants to waste their time and wants to find the best lawyers as soon as possible.
Clients call the lawyer’s office with heaps of questions on their minds, and a receptionist won’t be able to answer all those logically and legally. A legal intake expert is well-versed in legal knowledge. They are familiar with handling all those questions and helping the client get the answer they are looking for. Though a firm’s website consists of FAQs, they aren’t always complete. Several unusual questions from clients characterize the legal industry.
A legal intake expert can calm down callers who are in crisis. This eliminates the need to answer hundreds of questions from callers on your end. It is not an excellent idea to answer the client’s questions like a lawyer, and it eats up a lot of your time. Having an intake expert on your team will help you free up you and your legal team from answering those queries and better concentrate on the law.
People calling you may not be from a law background, and possibly they won’t even be familiar with any simple legal process. A good intake process handled by an intake expert will help clients prepare themselves for what is to come. Intake professionals help the callers with the process of partnering with the firm and establishing trust. This helps to make clients loyal for a longer period. Since the client will know the entire process, they will be more relaxed when they meet the lawyer in person. This can help you boost the firm’s reputation since they will deal with the case easily.
Since the lawyer’s phone is flooded with hundreds of calls daily, it is pretty complex for your receptionist to handle all efficiently and answer them correctly. This requires strong lead qualification skills to pick the clients who are ready to keep their appointments. Here is where an intake expert comes into the picture. They excel at quickly understanding the case and setting up appointments to take the matter further and successfully convert leads into clients.
After all, what matters the most is having a high ratio of appointments at the end of the day. An intake expert will be very prompt with this process and communicate the same to the attorneys. Whether you are a lawyer or a law practice manager with a temporary concern, Legal Soft Solution can always help you. Talk to our expert team for the best assistance to any law firm management and legal team issue, or call us at (424) 341-4917. Book a demo now to know more about what Legal Soft Solution can offer.
Legal Soft Solution is your law firm’s one-stop destination for:
You can also visit our website to stay in the know about our Latest Events. Book a Demo or check our social media accounts for more updates: