Gideon Legal Chatbot Software

Chatbot Software for Law Firms

process management

Marketing, Messaging, Technology

The Goldbergs: The Real Trick is to Uncomplicate Your Marketing

A Rube Goldberg Machine is an overly-complicated chain reaction program, kind of like the one in the opening sequence of ‘Back to the Future’.

A lot of law firm marketing programs look just like that: half-formed marketing strategies, untested hypotheses, unknown results.  When it comes to marketing their practices, most law firm owners rely almost exclusively on referral marketing, and just hope that it keeps working.  Literally everything else is left up to chance.

Maybe a Rube Goldberg Machine is the kinder, gentler way to describe it.  But, it’s more like they’re throwing shit against the wall, to see what sticks.

And, you can bet your ass that those overly-complicated marketing programs you’ve designed, aren’t particularly inviting to your potential clients, either – who have to wade through the morass.  Legal consumers, like all consumers in the convenience economy, most highly prize engagement and speed above all else.

So, as 2022 draws to a close, and if your law firm marketing program seems less like a program, and more like a mess, you can still take some small steps to launching something better in 2023.  But, it will require you to be thoughtful about what you’re doing, and to get granular about the processes you build, as you try to place yourself in the shoes of your clients.

It’s possible to generate an effective marketing plan that features helpful automations; you just have to put the time in . . . and put away the duct tape.

(As it turns out, everything is not fixable with duct tape.)

Marketing, Technology

Split: It’s Okay to Segment Your Intake Model

Most law firms utilize a basic intake system – if they utilize anything at all.

Regardless of practice area, law firms tend to develop a single, simple intake form, that offers a smattering of the most basic questions: name, address, phone number, etc.  And, sure: it’s important to collect those items; and, it’s great to get contact information, and some further basic information about the potential client.  Only, that doesn’t provide the law firm with any real information about the potential value of the client’s case.

So, it becomes important to take this to the next level – to generate intake procedures that relate to specific case types.  An estate planning intake is very different from a criminal law, or an immigration law, intake.  How does that effect the basic information you’ll want to collect?  When and how do you collect asset information, as an estate planning attorney?  When do you inquire about past criminal history, as a criminal defense attorney?  When do you seek information about someone’s significant other and their relationship when your potential client seeks a green card?

If your law firm simply collects the most basic information, or only offers one stage of intake, you’re doing yourself a disservice, since you’re limiting your ability to effectively and efficiently vet new cases, when they come in.

Running modern businesses is about leveraging data to make better decisions, more quickly.  The more relevant and segmented your intake data, the less time you spend deciding whether to take a case, and the more time you spend converting new business.

It’s time to tailor your intake system around specific case types, so you can capture more targeted information.

After all, you can’t have a bucket list, without the buckets.

Analytics, Marketing, Messaging, Technology

What Everybody’s Chatting About – How Chatbots Are Revolutionizing Law Firm Intake | Part 5: Collecting Intake Data and Making Better Decisions

In this 6-part series, we’ll address how chatbots are changing the game for law firm intake.  This is part 5, where we’ll discuss how to use intake information to make better decisions.  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.

Data analytics has the potential to massively reformulate the way that law firms operate, and touches upon all aspects of law firm management.  Traditionally, lawyers have made decisions about how to run their law firms using gut reactions and ad hoc processes.  Even so, modern businesses make decisions based on data, small and big.  It’s about time law firms joined the fray.  For individual law firms, it makes sense to adopt data analytics practices where others do not, because it affords a massive competitive advantage.

When law firms do focus on data, it’s often financial data or process data.  Oftentimes, marketing data, including intake data, is ignored – this is perhaps a reason why productivity software options far outstrip marketing software options in legal.  But, marketing data, particularly intake data, is extremely useful when mined, which is the entire thesis behind the value of CRM software.  But, while CRM software evokes the entire marketing cycle, including phases of the productivity segment of the client lifecycle, chatbots can drill down to the moment of first engagement with clients, and offer data points respecting that unique moment in time when a potential client of any law firm becomes your lead.

Data acquisition via chatbot is essentially unlimited.  You can ask as much as a lead will tolerate.  For example, you can acquire personal information about financial status, residence, family status, contact information and preferences, and more.  Additionally, a chatbot can collect specific information about a potential client’s claim, like: practice area; date of incident, location of incident and other time and jurisdiction-sensitive information; conflict potential; and, narrative of events.  Not only can a chatbot collect data, but the underlying software can render it into reports.  Those reports can focus on individual clients or groups of clients, and can also be massaged to draw conclusions about case value.  By using a chatbot, and gathering as much information as you can and then leveraging it at the outset of a case (i.e. – before you take it), your law firm will be able to make better decisions about the cases you take on . . . or, don’t.  That process also has applications for the streamlining of referrals.

The data revolution in legal is only just beginning; but, chatbots will become an important component of it.

. . .

Now you know how a chatbot can help you make better decisions about the clients you take on or reject.  We’ll focus next time on chatbots and legal ethics.  Stay tuned, right here.