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Automated Intake for Law Firms

engagement agreement

Marketing

Spin City: Every Law Firm Interaction Can Become a Marketing Opportunity

Law firms should be aggressively scouting marketing opportunities.  This, of course, makes sense as a broad concept, because attorneys should always be looking to improve their clients’ happiness, and to generate referrals, where possible.

But, the funny thing is, that there are marketing opportunities, literally everywhere attorneys look; it’s just a matter of exploiting them.

I, mean think of these scenarios, where marketing may not be top of mind:

-Reviewing the engagement agreement with your client, which allows you to present as tech-forward (technology clause), and communicative (client communications clause).

-Scanning old paper files, and asking clients if they want to come into the office to pick up the paper.  Many people will do it, and it leads to referrals almost every time.

-Creating workflows for substantive case processes, and using those to generate regular notifications/updates to clients.

And, that’s hardly an exhaustive list.

As an attorney, every time you do something, anything – think about how you could also convert it to a marketing opportunity.

It’s a stone cold lock that you’ll make more money if you take this approach.

It’s Spin City, and you’re the mayor.

Marketing, Messaging, Technology

How to Talk to Legal Consumers Now, Part 1: Money

In this three-part series, we’ll discuss how lawyers should talk to today’s legal consumers across three primary areas of interest: money, expertise and the legal process.  These are the categories in which legal consumers have the most urgent questions.  And, it’s imperative for law firms to increase their chances to convert leads to clients by addressing each of these broad topics in ways that place the law firm in the most favorable light possible.  In part 1, we’ll cover how to talk to potential clients about money.

As Wyclef so eloquently said: ‘dollar, dollar bill, y’all’.  For lawyers and for law firm clients, it’s all about the Benjamins.  And, there’s a consistent tension in that relationship.  Law firm clients want to pay as little as possible for legal services; lawyers want to make as much money as they can for their businesses.  Largely, pricing and paying for legal services is one, big compromise.  And, that subtle dance of negotiation takes places at various points of the intake process.

In the first instance, the law firm will have to decide whether it will charge a consultation fee.  There are two, very vibrantly opposed schools of thought in this area.  Lawyers are often vehemently on one side or the other.  Of course, there isn’t necessarily a wrong answer.  For some practices, paid consultations can work, if only as a mechanism for pushing off tire kickers.  For other law firms, they may want to take on all comers, and are willing to spend time personally vetting individuals, or doing the same thing via a software tool, in order to find the diamond in the rough.  This is especially true of personal injury attorneys, whose potential clients may have impaired communications, but whose cases can end in large settlements.  Whatever your position, however, your law firm should be clear about whether a consultation fee is required; and, if one is, your law firm should be equally transparent about how it is paid, and when, and whether the consultation fee would be returned to the potential client if the potential client shows up to the prescreening meeting or if the law firm is retained by the potential client.

Actual fees for legal services, to be paid by clients, are far more regulated than consultation fees, of course.  There are specific requirements to include the rate or basis of fees in an engagement agreement.  However, many law firms sign clients on without taking the time to go over those expectations in a coherent way.  For many law firms, the desire is solely for the conversion of the retainer.  Once that’s in hand, the dialogue stops, and the client never hears about money again, aside from getting requests to pay.  On the lawyer’s side, this desire to acquire the engagement as the primary objective leaves law firms very willing to discount, in order to get a client signature on an engagement agreement.  For clients, lack of law firm transparency on pricing leads to inevitable surprise and upset over unexpected bills.  For lawyers, continuous discounting is a major culprit for revenue leakage.  Law firms should endeavor to cover all aspects of rates and fees with potential clients up front, and assure their understanding of all aspects of the fee structure prior to engagement.  If an in-person meeting is in place, broadcast relevant sections of the engagement agreement to a large screen.  Explain how a retainer works, as well as its relationship to trust accounting principles to which lawyers are required to adhere.  Explain further how continuous billing will commence, and outline payment options.  Also, address escalation measures for unpaid bills.  Make sure your clients know the nooks and crannies of your billing processing before they buy the English muffin.  And, stick to your guns.  Create a rate sheet, including a discounting structure, and do not deviate from it, no matter what.  This will ensure that your actual revenue better matches up with your revenue projections.

Having a rate sheet in place that you can rely on also helps the legal consumer, if it is constructed in the right way.  Legal consumers have more options for attorneys than ever before, and they have more options for getting connected to those attorneys than ever before: both directly, and via lead generation and referral portals. In other words, law firm clients can shop around; so, as a modern lawyer, you’ll need to know how your law firm’s pricing matrix fits into the wider legal ecosystem.  Even so, most law firms’ prices for specific localities being about equal, consumers are motivated to work with lawyers they believe are experts and whom they like, assuming one request for pricing information is met: potential law firm clients want price certainly, because they get it everywhere else.  Think about it: a consumer in the wider marketplace knows exactly what they’ll pay for Netflix, each month and each year.  Law firms almost never provide that level of price certainty.  And, quoting hourly rates without an endpoint is not what I’m talking about here.  It’s meager comfort for a consumer to be told that a law firm charges $450/hour until . . . the end of time?  That’s not going to work, because consumers want price certainty with respect to the total cost of representation.  That’s difficult to provide in the context of an hourly billing arrangement; but, with respect to flat fees and alternative billing models, like subscription services and legal products, price certainty is readily available.  It’s just a matter, in those cases, of determining the respective value of a law firm’s services in a different way: via a method that respects modern legal consumer demands.

Marketing, Messaging

How to Talk to Legal Consumers Now, Part 3: The Legal Process

In this three-part series, we’ll discuss how lawyers should talk to today’s legal consumers across three primary areas of interest: money, expertise and the legal process.  These are the categories in which legal consumers have the most urgent questions.  And, it’s imperative for law firms to increase their chances to convert leads to clients by addressing each of these broad topics in ways that place the law firm in the most favorable light possible.  In part 1, we addressed how lawyers should talk to potential clients about money.  In part 2, we covered the methods by which attorneys should express their expertise to leads.  In this last part of our series, we’ll relay how lawyers are best positioned to cover legal process considerations with potential clients.

As we went over in Part 2 of this series, law firms have traditionally been excellent at displaying the expertise of the firm, as well as the expertise level of specific attorneys within the firm, including for niche practice areas — even if that tends to break down when one exits the law firm website, where the vast majority of that information exists.  But, even so: attorneys are becoming more aggressive about using social media to promote themselves, even if law firms at large have not necessarily caught on so well.  However, having expertise, on its own, delivers only limited value.  Attorneys have to also convince their clients that they can be their guide through the legal process.  In sum, lawyers can’t just be good at what they do: they also have to communicate to leads and clients what it is that they do, in a way that a lay person would understand.

Legal consumers, as it turns, don’t just want a good attorney.  They also want a good attorney who can explain the legal process to them.  Legal consumers don’t just want to know the destination; they require evidence of the steps it takes to get there.  They’re like FitBit addicts.  Nevertheless, attorneys are very reluctant to provide their leads with information about the legal process, because they’ve been conditioned for years to avoid giving consumers more than just a taste of how the sausage is made, and because they are concerned over legal ethics.  However, neither eventuality is insurmountable.

In terms of ethical obligations when speaking to leads (you can talk about pretty much anything you want, anytime you want, with existing clients), it’s all about keeping those leads apprised of the current status of the relationship; so, yes: this is very much like the early days of Facebook.  Just make sure you have potential clients click through or sign onto disclaimers before you speak with them about the legal process generally  — not their specific cases, or case hypotheticals.  Then, when the rubber meets the road, sign them up via an engagement agreement, or move on, and send a nonengagement agreement, to confirm that no attorney-client relationship commenced.  And, really, that’s what this is all about: making sure that the potential clients is consistently aware that there is no attorney-client relationship, and that that acknowledgment can be documented.

Most lawyers would not be confused with effective salespersons.  And, many lawyers think of the term ‘selling’ as an ugly one.  This is not entirely surprising, though, for a profession that has only been allowed to sell to the public for a little less than 50 years.  And, lawyers still adhere to the old tenet that you don’t give away too much, that you leave them wanting more, while every modern sales mechanism, especially content marketing via social media, is about sharing more and more discreet information about what businesses do.  The real fear for most lawyers, however, is likely those DIY client — the ones, they fear, who will represent themselves.  But, that’s probably an unrealistic fear, too.  If the attorney relays all of the complexities about what they do, a potential client is not going to say: ‘Awesome.  I’m just gonna go to law school now, and will let you know how all this went in five years.’  The far more likely scenario is that, if you do a thorough job explaining the legal process to your potential client, you will have cemented your expertise, and made it more likely that that potential client will ultimately choose you.  Plus, if you make what you do sound really difficult (which it is) your potential client is far less likely to try it on their own.  And, in any event, most legal consumers who actually reach out to a lawyer are substantially motivated to hire an attorney, and don’t manage their legal problem on their own.  They want help: the question is how willing you are to provide that help, and how soon.

Marketing, Messaging, Technology

What Everybody’s Chatting About – How Chatbots Are Revolutionizing Law Firm Intake | Part 6: Chatbots and Legal Ethics

This is the last part of our 6-part series, in which we’ve addressed how chatbots are changing the game for law firm intake.  This is part 6, where we’ll discuss legal ethics concerns related to chatbots. In part 1, we defined what a chatbot is. In part 2, we covered common chatbot features. In part 3, we addressed why chatbots are so essential for modern law firm intake. In part 4, we taught you how to build the perfect law firm chatbot. In part 5, we offered some suggestions on how chatbots can help you make better decisions about client intake.

Any new legal technology comes replete with questions about legal ethics.  That’s totally fair.  Lawyers are uniquely situated professionals, whose entire businesses can be wiped away due to an ethical snafu, and each state has its own specific jurisdictional rules, which makes it especially difficult for multistate practices to derive an effective formula for staying out of trouble.  Even longstanding law office technology concepts,  like use of the cloud and epayments (which have largely received stamps of approval from ethics boards), still cause many attorneys to break out in hives.

The law firm chatbot implies questions about legal ethics (as do most marketing tools, especially those focused on engagement), because the technology is meant to engage non-clients.  In that construct, lawyers are concerned over ethics rules banning improper solicitation and the inadvertent creation of an attorney-client relationship.  Each of these concerns, however, can be dispensed with.

Chatbots don’t prompt the impermissible solicitation of clients any more than traditionally-accepted website contact forms do.  Chatbots merely invite a user (law firm lead) to input information.  And, in any event, once a user lands on a law firm website (another traditionally-accepted form of law firm marketing engagement), the question of improper solicitation largely goes away, because the website visitor has affirmatively sought out information about a law firm, and landed on an informational page.  This is not like the virtual equivalent of handing a business card to an injured party at the scene of a motor vehicle accident.  A chatbot is just another information-gathering tool seated at a law firm website.

The difference between chatbots and most law website applications is that a chatbot is an engagement tool that allows for a conversational interface, such that the more relevant concern is: will the law firm lead believe that an attorney-client relationship is formed, even if the law firm does not intend for one to be formed.  This is an old problem, with a modern twist, because a chatbot allows for a conversation, rather than just being a one-way information collection medium.  However, the solution is not dissimilar from what lawyers do in other contexts that implicate the gulf between clients and non-clients, because it’s still all about transparency and providing concrete status updates to non-clients.  And, in the context of a chatbot, that still looks very much like it does everywhere else.  The addition of a disclaimer into the chatbot dialog and/or mention of the use of a chatbot in the general website disclaimer puts the user on notice that mere use of the tool, including to book an initial consultation, does not create an attorney-client relationship.  Then, this is about finalizing the nature of the relationship.  Just as a lawyer would normally do, in this context: if a lead becomes a client, she signs a fee agreement; if a lead does not become a client, she receives a non-engagement letter or email from the law firm, in order to finally confirm the point.  Via chatbot technology, that can all be delivered through the software itself.

Chatbots may also have the ability to notify law firms of potential conflicts of interest, via integration with contact or client management software or reference to internal datasets, which potential conflicts lawyers can then clear or not.  The technology is not currently sufficiently advanced as to ‘automate’ conflict checks.  Currently, at least, the only safe route to clear conflicts via a chatbot is through the creation of an alert or flag that a law firm can process in the course of business.

Now you know how to implement a chatbot in an ethically-compliant fashion.  Thanks for following along with our 6-part series on how chatbots are revolutionizing modern law firm intake.  For more on law marketing in the modern age, keep reading our weekly blog posts here.

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