On this episode of The Law Firm Blueprint, hosts Jay Ruane and Seth Price are joined by the intake maestro, Gary Falkowitz of Capture Now. Together, they explore the often-neglected but vital aspect of law firm management: the intake process. Gary, known for his deep expertise and impactful strategies, shares invaluable insights into how a well-structured intake process can dramatically improve client conversion rates and drive your firm’s revenue growth. Gary delves into the common pitfalls that many law firms encounter when handling intake and provides actionable solutions to overcome these challenges. Learn about the critical importance of consistent follow-up and why integrating various communication channels is key to engaging potential clients effectively.
Gary also emphasizes the benefits of having a dedicated in-house intake team versus outsourcing, highlighting how internal staff can better connect with clients and enhance the overall client experience. This episode is packed with practical advice and strategies to refine your intake process and ensure that no lead is wasted. Subscribe to our channel for more expert guidance on optimizing law firm operations and legal marketing. Watch now to unlock the secrets to a more efficient and profitable intake process!
#LawFirm #Insights #Intake #GaryFalkowitz #SethPrice #JayRuane #LawFirmBlueprint
Hello, hello and welcome to this edition of the Law Firm Blueprint! I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, founder of the Criminal Mastermind, and with me, as always, is my man Seth Price over there in the DC, Maryland, Virginia, headquarters of BluShark Digital and Price Benowitz, and we are joined by none other than the master of law firm intake, our good friend, friend of the show, and just an all-around amazing human being, Gary Falkowitz. Gary, thank you so much for being with us as we join a new session. We’re gonna, we’re gonna be talking about intake, and there’s nobody better to start the talk about intake, than with you. I can’t think of anybody else who’s more… I may be Mr. Systems, but you’re Mr. Intake, Gary. Seth, is Mr. Annoying, maybe? So let’s, let’s start off the show. Seth, what do you got for us?
Well, Gary, great, great to have you here. Look, you know, we spent the summer speaking to people who had spent their time day in and day out, improving law firms generally. But the piece that seems to be the forgotten… you know, the forgotten member of the family, intake is one of those areas that, you know, there’s more opportunity for most law firms. There’s more, you know, fundamentals being missed, more misconceptions, and yet, you know, you’ve been out there. We’ve heard you speak for years; you speak truth; you’ve written an amazing book for those that haven’t read it, read it. You know, why is it that law firms struggle so much with intake?
You know, first of all, let me give a thank you out there. Both you guys put me on this pedestal. I could, there’s no way I can meet those expectations. So I’m not—I’m just a normal intake guy. All right, maybe—
I gotta, I gotta cut you off right there. No, you know, look, I visited you based on a cold call in an airplane hangar intake facility that you would help construct with one of the biggest, baddest New York firms. You articulate the issues and motivate verbally in ways that we’ve not heard anybody else. There are a lot of people that raise their hand for this. You are an elite heir when it comes to this. So, you know, we’re not letting you poo-poo that.
Well, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. You know, intake, the three of us and many of the people that are watching this, went to law school. I graduated in 2005. I can’t believe I’m coming up to 20 years, which is crazy. And none of us took a class that said, this is how you run your business. It just didn’t happen. So we all either fell into ownership or decided later in our legal career, “I want to own, or start, or create my own law firm,” and we all improvised, which is fine because there’s nothing wrong with improvising. As a matter of fact, improvisation has probably led to so much success and thought and creative ideas, but we don’t have to improvise everything.
And I think one of the things that we get really nervous about is this idea that we have to constantly hustle in our business and that if we can’t create a process for it, we almost just push it to the side and hope that the person we have in charge of it can take care of it, and let’s cross our fingers and focus where we have processes. Now I’m going to tell you right now, and granted that I can’t do it in an hour, but there are processes at intake that you can implement that will allow you to sleep much better at night. And I think it does take some time. It does take focus. It takes management and accountability, yada yada yada.
But I think we have to stop running away from it. Stop looking to just outsource it. Stop looking to just cross our fingers and say, well, we were more profitable last month than we’ve ever been, so we don’t have to change a damn thing. When the question you probably should be asking is, did we maximize profit? Did we maximize revenue? And I think we stay away from that question because we’re nervous about the answer. So there’s my general sense on it. I think we get nervous that if it has something to do with sales and hustle, we kind of move away from it, because it’s not a process, unfortunately.
So one of the things I’ve talked to the consultants about when we did that series, and look, it’s… you know that you are essentially representing a consultant to a piece, a very, very important piece of the law firm you’ve seen inside of doz—hundreds—of law firms at this point, some more than others. What are some of the fundamental missteps that you see that are low-hanging fruit? Let’s just start with, what missteps do you see, and the follow-up will be, which are the ones that are easily fixable versus more institutional issues that need to be changed?
Yeah. So I had a great call this morning with a very successful, large-volume law firm. Great people. I mean really, check the box of culture. Check the box of reputation. Check the box of respected by everybody. But they had some issues. They have some issues at intake. And one of the interesting aspects of the conversation was, “Hey, Gary, you recommend that we have a much more aggressive follow-up cadence, and we’re very hesitant about it because we don’t want to annoy the folks that reach out to us, and we’d rather not annoy them. So after a few times of trying to get in touch with a web lead, if they don’t pick up, we’re going to walk away.”
And it was interesting to hear, because A) you don’t hear that a lot in the sales business, if you’re, if you, if you’re really heavy in sales, you don’t mind someone saying, “Hey, stop calling me. I’m not interested.” As a matter of fact, it makes you feel a little bit better because then you could say, okay, well, we didn’t lose it because I was too aggressive. Because that’s the worst thing—you have two choices, guys, in sales. And let’s start with that sort of default. If you are watching this podcast, you are likely in sales, right? So accept that. Now let’s move on to the next aspect, which is, if you’re in sales, you’re either going to be aggressively quitting or aggressively trying. Which do you want to do? Which will allow you to sleep better at night? Do you want to say, You know what? I tried they didn’t pick up three or four times? I’m going to quit (aggressively), or, you know what?
And I’ll give you a really, an interesting story. And I’ve been sharing this story a lot, if you don’t, and cut me off if I’m going too long here, but I think you’ll see the relevance. I reached out to a bank recently, to a financial conversation. I called on my time. They, the bank, the account manager that I spoke with, it wasn’t a good time for them; they were going to give me a call back. Fine. No big deal. No worries. Not a sales conversation. However, he calls, every time he calls me back, and he’s called me probably about five or six times, I don’t pick up his call. Now you might say, “What are you mad at him? Gary, why are you not picking up his phone call? What’s going on?” And the answer is a lot simpler than that. I’m too busy, and I know that a conversation with my bank requires my attention. I mean, I’m talking about undivided, if we’re talking about numbers and money in a bank and how to invest things, and I can’t do that while I’m coaching my son in basketball or I’m taking my daughter to a test. Can’t do it, so I ignore the call. Now, I could call back when I want to, if I have some time, but in reality, I still need to speak to this guy, and he’d be stupid to say, well, Gary obviously isn’t interested in banking with us anymore. I should stop calling him. No! What he should assume is it’s probably not a good time for Gary to talk to me, but I’ll continue to follow up, maybe at different times, maybe I’ll text him, and use a different method so he can get back to me via text and let me know, “Hey, phone’s not good during the day because I’m with my kids or I’m doing some work,” and that’s got to be the mentality we take with our firm. We can’t go, “Hey, I tried three times, left three messages. They’re obviously not interested.” No, you’re an attorney. You’re calling from a law firm. That is a serious conversation for most people. They can’t just, speak to you while they’re on their lunch break and speaking to their boss or speaking to their child; the timing has to make sense. So do you want to aggressively quit or aggressively follow up?
You know, it’s funny as, as I reflect on my roles, I have sort of two organizations, and lots of people are under there. I would crowdsource about 80% of the issues that I face could be solved if somebody moved from email to another form of communication, internally, externally. And I feel like it’s a piece of what you’re talking about here, which is it’s, whatever it takes to connect, and that that is where Mr. Systems comes, because you can’t, if it was you or me, I’d say just that. Hey, go from this. You try a phone call. You do a te-. But if it isn’t systematized, it can’t be done beyond just one person doing it. If I could afford, you know, Gary, to sit at my law firm, that’d be great, but that’s not going to happen. And even if I could, he could only take so many phone calls. So the question is, if you want to touch people who aren’t paid top dollar necessarily, who are in a team, unless you do have that methodology where that concept of time of day, mode of communication, is somehow syst-, you’re just you’re hoping, but it’s not going to happen.
Yeah, I think you touched on something that maybe shouldn’t be assumed. Which is there, you know, what might be good for one person, might not work for another. And you and I are similar. I have, at least in my personal email, I’m looking at it right now, 23 unread emails. 23. Some might say it’s nothing, some might say it’s a lot, but they go back. There’s probably a few in there that are over a year old, unread, over a year old, because I need to get back to it at some point, that even if it’s a year old, I gotta get back to that email. I know it’s important if the, if the sender of that email had my phone number and texted me, half of those emails would be gone. Because I hate, now you’re learning something about me, I have three unread text messages, three. I don’t like having unread text messages. I need to respond. You know, me, I’m intake. I need to respond. I get as angry with my wife if I see she has unread text, unread text messges she hasn’t responded to, you know, so if they had that mode of communication to reach out to me, there’s a 75% chance I’m responding, which goes to another point. It’s not just aggressive in frequency, but it’s aggressive in mode. Are you reaching out to somebody through different aspects of communication to ensure that if you lose that lead, you don’t go “could we have done more?” Because that’s the question, that’s the question we should all be asking, when we lose a client, could we have done more? And if, and by the way, sometimes you can’t. So I don’t want everyone to think that, oh, you should, you should be able to convert 100% of your qualified leads every single month. And if you don’t, you’re terrible. No, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the guy goes with this distant cousin from another country. He says, I can do personal injury in New York. And they take that chance, and that’s up to them, but I need you to answer that question. Could you have done more? If the answer is yes and you don’t make a change, well, now you have to start looking in the mirror, and wondering, why, why are we not making this change?
So where do you start? I mean, this is different than what we’ve talked about before. I mean, I’ve always, you know, there’s Gary, how do you be on the phone? But okay, you’re the law firm owner, and, you know, asking for a friend, right? So you’re a law firm owner, you want to make sure that you’re getting diversity of technique, you know, phone, text, call, you know, email, whatever it is. And you also want time and cadence. How many do you go, and different for a hot lead versus one that you know is broken, where you may want to allocate resources, where do you start to whiteboard that or create that methodology for your team to follow?
Yeah, and if I had a whiteboard behind me, I’d probably use it right now. But let’s start the most, the most Vegas, basic answer to that, which is responding. You need to have staff to respond not only to inbound phone calls, but to make outbound phone calls to web leads, to handle any third party lead generation leads that you’re receiving from other companies. It’s got to start there guys, and if you don’t have, and by the way, the gold standard, in my opinion, is it’s your it’s your primary people. It’s your in, it’s your internal people. It’s not outsourcing this. I don’t think you should be outsourcing your your your initial response during business hours. And the reason why, by the way, is because those folks know more about your law firm and know more about what, where the claimant is talking about, which means that they could create a relationship a lot faster. So something I’ve been communicating when I speak with intake team, team members or law firms, is there should be a goal for every single call, every single call, even the ones where you can’t help somebody where the responder of the firm is able to personalize that conversation at least once. Whether it’s, “oh, that’s on East 17th Street. Is that right near the dominoes? Yeah, yeah, I’ve been to that Domino’s, good, check. We just strengthened our relationship.” “Oh, your birthday is in March. Mine’s also in March. That means we’re (I’m making this up) Tauruses”, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the point is, we just created a connection. “Oh, my God, your your father’s name is Gary. My brother’s name is Gary. He hates the name he hates when I call him Gar.” You know, whatever it is, we’ve got to do that. And the best people to do that are our internal people, by training them, right?
So let’s go back, because I kind of got off on a segway for a moment. You need to have, you need to make sure you have the right people, the right amount of people, and the right quality of person that picks up that phone call. That’s where it starts. And you need to have the metrics to know whether you do. One of the questions I get a lot from law firms is “Gary, are we understaffed? Are we understaffed? Are we not—”, and there are certain factors that you should be considering to answer that question, for instance, well, do you have any missed calls during the day? Are any calls going? Are you outsourcing overflow phone calls during the day to a call center or to a company like mine, Capture Now, which is an AI voice bot. How many of those calls, if you are for new leads, are going to those companies during the day? For new leads, not reception calls. And if that answer is, “oh, it’s about 20 a day”, that’s a really high number, 20 calls for someone who’s not in your internal team to handle from nine to five, forget about the other nine to five or the other, whatever. But I’m talking to you Monday through Friday. Then we look at the weekends. And I am sorry for the some of you folks who thought that owning a law firm, you know, you get all these things. And I’m not looking to crap on anybody, right? You get, you’re getting all these emails about how you can own a law firm and work one hour a week, and that’s wonderful for those folks who do that. I think it’s fantastic. But in reality, given the competitive nature of our industry, speed and resources matter. Matter. I mean, now if you want to, if you want to, to give that to other folks, delegate that to other folks that are going to be in charge of that, that’s fine, but Saturday and Sunday, guys, if you’re the type of firm right now that says, “Listen, we just, we don’t handle we don’t have anybody around to pick up calls on Saturday, Sunday. We don’t do any follow up on Saturday or Sunday. It goes to voicemail. Oh, we miss it, you know. And I care more about my weekends than my business.” First of all, you, you’re allowed to have that prerogative, and I applaud you for being able to draw the line there. However, if you’re looking to scale and maximize return on your investment, then there needs to be a solution for those weekends. There needs to be a solution for those nights, because people work during the day and then at, you know, if you’re like me, sometimes on the weekend, is where I get my creative work done, right? And I’m in the car, I’m heading to, you know, my son’s sleeping in the back seat on the way to a soccer game, and I’m just thinking about things. That’s where I start the “what if” questions, but what if I created this? What if I offered this? What if I recommended this? And just similarly, claimants or potential clients, that’s when they go, “Oh, what if I call the law firm. You think they’re available? Let me call the law firm right now.” Call the first one, no one picks up. Call the second one, someone picks up. I don’t know that it’s Johnny working in his mother’s basement. I just know Johnny picked up right away and told me he could help. That’s important. That response is important. So going full circle, you got to make sure that you have the appropriate staff.
I will tell you, Gary, one of the best things I ever did in the beginning of 2023 is that we went to seven days a week and, and we are now opening up anywhere between 60 and 100 grand of new business every weekend. And there’s something that’s amazing about being able to walk into the office on Monday morning and know that, wow, my payroll is definitely made for the week. And there’s, and what’s amazing to me is that the other lawyers in my market are saying, yeah, you know, we used to call people back on Monday, but now they’re not even answering our phone calls. And I’m like, yeah, because I’m eating all your lunch.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I would rather, I would rather staff intake, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and give my Wednesday and Thursdays off. I mean, I don’t do that, but if I had to give them those days off, I would make them work weekends. And my weekend people are great, and it is. It’s amazing how many people will say, “I didn’t, I can’t believe I got through your law firm on a weekend.” And their response is, well, you didn’t get in trouble for us, we’re criminal defense. You didn’t get in trouble during nine to five. You know, we appreciate that, and you got a lot going on, so we’re here for you when you need us.
I’m pretty sure, a certain football player reached out to an attorney on a, actually, on a Sunday, right? So is that a Sunday or Monday? I’m sure—
Sunday.
Sunday.
Sunday, I believe. So yeah, it’s, and who knows what’s gonna happen there, but that’s neither here nor there, that, that’s exactly right. I think you, you know we are living in a world of, first of all, access 24/7 right? So people want access, expect access, and see access 24/7 and then, because of that access that they know is available, they then expect and want instant gratification.
Oh that’s huge.
So, so there’s another, you know, and I might be if I’m going too far here, Jay or Seth, stop me. But you know, you talked about some of the challenges you walk into a firm with and, and, and certainly the first one is staff. But I’ll tell you right at the top of the list, guys, is this need to provide or convey; and I’ll tell you the difference in a moment, instant gratification. Provide instant gratification might be someone, like someone like you guys who do criminal defense work, where you get paid immediately and you start working immediately, and you start potentially to give them some services that they’re paying for immediately. Convey might be a situation where maybe a personal injury law firm says, hey, I think we can assist you, but we have to begin our investigation. In order for us to begin our investigation I need you sign this agreement, and while I have you on the phone, let me get it signed right now so we can begin the investigation immediately after this call, right? So now I’m conveying my intention of this relationship, and if I—I’ll tell you something really cool, right now, if you’re watching this, you want to get ahead. Here’s my three minute rule. Three minute rule, within three minutes of the conversation, you should be able to convey your intention of the call. Not get it signed in three minutes. That’d be pretty cool, too, but convey within three minutes. “Hey, Mrs. Johnson, let me just stop you for a moment. Based on everything you just told me I want, I want to let you know you did the right thing by calling, because that’s exactly the type of case we handle, and I’m confident that we can begin an investigation for you here, and I think we’re the right firm for you. So I’d like to get you signed up. But before I tell you how you’re going to get signed up, let me ask a few more questions,” and now you continue the intake process. But within three minutes, I knew, because she was rear-ended, she was injured and happened yesterday, that this is the type of lead or person that I want to represent. It shouldn’t take us. I’ll tell you a real-life example.
And then Seth, I can tell you have a question. It’s a real life example. I listen to on a monthly basis, well over 100 calls. And I look at well over 500, 600 leads in a CRM on a monthly basis. Easy. There was a call I listened to last month, and I, and the coolest thing about what I do is that I don’t have to make up anything. I don’t have to make up anything. So my memory could be terr-, you know, it’s like, my memory has to be good. My creativity could be anywhere it wants, but as long as the memory is good, I’m good. A call came in to a law firm, and it was the ideal personal injury lead, and the, this woman said, “hey, listen, I’m on my, at the eight and a half minute mark. The eight and a half minute mark, I’m on my lunch break. I have to go right now, but I’ll call you back.” Hung up. The intake specialist had never yet indicated an intention to represent this woman. At eight and a half minutes. I have no idea what happened to that call. I don’t know if she called back. I don’t know if he called back. I don’t know. All I know is that eight and a half minutes that phone went dead, and we never told them, we being the law firm, never told the claimant, “Hey, this is exactly what we do every single day.” So you did the right thing by calling, because guess what, had we said that, the woman may have said to herself, “You know what? I’m going to be late. Forget my my lunch breaks ending in three minutes. I need to get this signed. Let me go five minutes, back to the, five minutes late, back to the office and get this signed.” But because we didn’t do that, that’s one less thing for her to consider. And she said, you know what, I don’t have time to do this conversation. Have this conversation anymore. I’ll call you guys back. Boom. We can’t afford to do that. None of us can afford to do that. So there’s my second one. Be able to make a decision within three minutes of the call.
We’re going to continue going down that path. But as Bill Biggs talks about, you know, the biggest thing that has affected our positive growth in intake has been focusing on wants, because it’s easy with all the different touches you get at a firm to, you know, think about, oh, everything is equal. Versus, if these are wants, getting them out of the category of, it’s a call to this is where you have to express your intention, as you were just talking about, talk to me a little bit about best practices in that world, about how your team should be reallocating time and pivoting once they sort of can identify that. And I’ll throw the second piece of that, which sort of scares me, which is the person on the phone very often, while you may listen to recorded calls afterwards, is the one setting it, and that that, to me, that pull and tug where the human element can throw things off a little bit.
Yeah. So first of all, Bill Biggs is crushing it. So love that, that he’s doing so well. I know he has a conference probably going on, if not today, tomorrow, this week, but wishing him nothing but success. And certainly, he’s one of the smarter guys in the industry, and he’s right. A focus on, on wants is, is necessary. Now I’m going to I’m going to share my thoughts about this, and not everything I share guys is agreed by everybody. So that’s okay. There are many different ways to be successful, but, but, my, my conclusions and my thoughts come from years and many law firms and many intakes of reviewing and working with and I believe, given the competitive nature of our industry right now, we would be silly not to have escalation processes that are available to our team in real time. Gary, what are you talking about? Escalation processes? Well, let me give you one of my favorite examples, analogies that I use all the time, the car industry is a sales industry, and they get it. And they know that when Gary Falkowitz comes into their dealership and I sit down with their salesperson, and I spend 45 minutes with their salesperson I feel really good that I brought him down $25 a month on a new lease, they know that they have me close. And then when I tell their sales agent, “hey, I just want to go back and talk to my wife, share these details with her, and I’ll give you a call later today.” Guys, thank you so much. It was so nice to meet you. Johnny the salesperson says, “Wait a second, this is what he’s thinking. I can’t let Gary out of this dealership for multiple reasons. One is my competitor is down the block.” You guys realize there are multiple dealerships within a block of each other. Quite often, my competitor is down the block. He might reconsider what he wants here. He might change what he wants. He may get a better deal elsewhere. So what can I—this is what he thinks. This is what he’s trained to think: “What can I say? What can I do to ensure that if he leaves this dealership, I know that I’ve done everything possible to get him to sign?” And here’s what he does. He says, “Gary, totally, totally understand. You want to go talk to your wife. You can call, as a matter of fact, why don’t you take my phone, give her a call. But before you leave, what I’d love to do is introduce you to our manager.” You mean for me? Gary? You’re gonna stop, disrupt the manager’s day. Just for me? “Absolutely, Gary, you are a very important person to us, so please,” the manager comes over, shakes my hand, does the whole “Gary, this is the right spot for you.” They know that they don’t want me leaving without a check in their hands and a set of keys in mine. So they escalated it over to the manager.
And if we don’t have similar escalation processes internally at our firm, I’m telling you your competitors do. Our competitors do. We can’t afford to say, well, my intakes so great. They can’t get it done. You know, then it’s not worth it. We, guys, I need you. And I can tell Jay wants to jump in here. I want to hear exactly what you have to say. I need everyone to understand, even if it’s you, Mr. Owner or Mrs. Owner, I need everybody to understand that your escalation processes are sometimes the difference maker. Compare the time, do the cost benefit analysis, the time it takes to put a manager, a supervisor, a lawyer on the phone, compared to the benefit of the fee that you might be receiving on that case. You know, it’s worth it every single time, if it’s qualified every single time.
Yeah. And my old point of that is, you know, on the criminal side, where we are, where we’re trying to get paid up front on those calls, when you have that client who’s on the phone and they’ve talked to two or three people in the office, if they’re not going to hire you, they have to say no to three people. And it’s harder to reject three people than it is to reject one, because people don’t want to reject people. People want, you know, no one likes saying no, I’m going to go another way. And so psychologically, it makes it so much harder for people to say. And if you’ve got three people involved in the call, that’s three people involved in your defense, that you’re going to let down if you don’t hire my law firm. And so that’s—we’ve been doing that, passing the calls and working it up the line for years, and it’s really helped with our with our retention.
But the thing that I want to ask you, Gary, and you mentioned it a little bit, is, you know, none of us have a crystal ball, but you are ahead of it with Capture Now, you know, AI is all the buzz. Where do you see AI impacting intake in the years to come? Because so many people figure, well, I can just put my—you know, they hire an outsourced group and somebody else will just do my intake for me. Lawyers aren’t thinking business-wise, but the tools in AI are getting better and better. So where do you think AI is going to be able to take us in the years to come?
So I really hope they don’t replace conversations with people altogether. You know? I mean, I’m nervous right now technologically, that my kids are not going to have the social skill sets or skills that I want them to have because they’re so addicted to their phones now that being said, we’d be very silly to ignore the role that technology is playing, both socially and professionally, in our lives and in our companies, in our businesses. And if we’re going to say, well, I only want people to do certain things, we’re going to do it slower. We’re going to be able to assist fewer people, and we’re going to be less successful. So we are going to have to inch closer and closer to relying on technology with respect to AI and answering calls. I’m not the first one to tell you, okay, I had a call center. It was a choir. Okay? We signed over 100,000 cases, mass, mostly mass torts, high volume cases for law firms nationwide. I managed the call center. I was in the call center when the people that I trained and I hired were on the phone, and I would hear them say things, and I’d scratch my head and go, why are they saying that? Why, I—we never, I never talked about that. We never talked about this. Why? Why is a phone ringing and they’re having a conversation with their neighbor, but they’re not picking up the phone yet these—I’m standing six feet away from them. Now, I’m not looking to denigrate them or condescend them or say anything poorly about the folks in my call center. Most of them are excellent. But the point is, it was unpredictable. It was unpredictable. And if you’re running a business where you’re spending a significant amount of money to make the phone ring, the one thing that can never be unpredictable, never, is picking up that phone ever, ever be unpredictable.
Now you might say, “But Gary, you just said your your primary intake team. You don’t want to replace them.” I don’t. I want your primary intake team to pick up those phones, create a relationship and sign qualified claimants. But if they’re not available, I need the next best thing. I need the most predictable response available, and that’s where technology comes into play. I don’t have to worry about training. I don’t have to worry about someone having a bad having a bad day. I mean, Jay, we’ve talked about this example. We had a criminal defense law firm that’s using Capture Now, right now, and the straw that broke the camel’s back for that firm was someone called their firm off hours, a call center representative at a company that they’re using, an outsourced company picked up the phone call. It was a criminal defense lead, and the call center representative told the caller, “I think you should turn yourself into the police.” This is what the call center representative stated. I’m sure she meant no harm by it. I’m sure, or he, I’m sure they actually meant to help, right? “I think, you know, you probably turn yourself into police.” That’s what maybe someone in their position would normally say. They’re not trained in criminal defense intake or criminal defense litigation. So the voice bots, the Capture Now is never going to say that. We’re going to retrieve information. Can you imagine this, call comes in, retrieves information, puts it into the CRM, puts it into the file, creates a callback request, or even warm transfers a call if it’s qualified to a claimant. That’s what Capture Now does, and I’m sure whether it’s capture now or other products, because I please, I don’t want to make this about a sales pitch for our company, any voice bot, any technology that picks up calls.
Where do I see the future going? I see it retaining cases. I see them being able to provide updates on cases for existing clients. I see them being able to schedule calls, calendar calls between a lawyer and an existing client. There’s really no limit. I don’t love the idea. I’ll tell you right now, just my own personal opinion. I don’t love the idea of trying to fake a claimant or person on the phone out. For instance, every once in a while, I’ll get a call from a bot that says, “Hi, this is Lisa. Is this Gary?” And I know within a second, “Lisa, you’re just a recorded voice, and you want me to think you’re a real person.” And I get really pissed off about it; others might not. I’m not looking to do that. I’m looking to tell a caller, “Hi, rare advanced technology for the law firm. And rather, you wait on hold, Let me gather some basic information from you right now, put it into the system, and either someone will call you back or I’ll get you in touch with someone immediately.” Lots of times, guys, callers will call a law firm, especially existing clients. They just want to provide an update. They don’t need to speak to somebody. Or they’re just looking for an update. Can you imagine this: caller says, “I’m just looking for an update on my case.” And then the voicebot says, “Mr. Johnson, understand you want an update on your case. Looks like the case was filed last week. An attorney should be reaching out to you in the next couple of weeks. Any other questions?” “Nope, that sounds great.” You just appeased your client without stopping what your lawyer does for the day. And I think regardless of whether it’s Capture Now, another AI bot, we’re going to have to… you look at like Chat GPT, I use it every single day, business and personal, right? I have a foundation for my son. I’m thinking about sending out an email, and I want to figure out how to articulate the email appropriately. I go to Chat GPT, I paste in what I want to do, and I say, can you write it better than that for me. So we are going to have to lean into technology and those firms and folks who are not. I wish you the best of luck, because that’s all you have going for you right now.
So Gary, listening to Gary speak over the years, one thing that’s always stuck with me—on its worst day, your internal intake should be your first place before an answering service, or, frankly, where AI is today, if you can, you should be maximizing your own people as you sort of, the whole first part of this conversation, understand there are AI options, present company included, and knowing that we’re going to have issues of overflow, God forbid, your marketing is too strong. Somebody breaks within your team, whatever it is, there is a need, potentially, for live people, not at your firm, to be answering the phones. As hard as it is running your own team, you’re talking. You’re one of the smartest guys in this space, if not the top of the pyramid, and you ran your own one. You’re telling of dysfunction within your intake group, and that it’s not like these people knew each of the firms. So what are the things that a law firm can do when they are using somebody for overflow? You want to minimize it. You want to maximize your own. You may want to diversify and test AI if that’s going to work for you. But how do you manage that third party, or how do you first even evaluate where to go? There are differences. There are groups that are $3 a minute. There groups that are $1 a minute. Where do you come down? How do you allocate the resources? And how do you sort of manage this outsourced group?
Yeah, okay, I’m gonna give you a list of things. Let’s say, let’s say I did. I didn’t know that, that AI existed, and I needed to. I just needed, you know, it’s 10 years ago, I need to work with an outsourced call center. I would say that number one, you’re gonna have to have some level of quality assurance on what they do. You cannot outsource to another group of people and ignore accountability. So you’re gonna have to hold them accountable by using quality assurance by listening to their calls. Number two, you’re also gonna have to do quality assurance and compare what was, what happened on that phone call to what was shared with us, either via email or the CRM to see whether they’re consistent. Now you might say, “come on, Gary, that why would they not be consistent?” Because they might not be consistent, right? Because sometimes, let me explain to, let me spell it for you. Sometimes this call center representative, who you did not train, will summarize in their own words what happened on that conversation, not knowing what’s important or what the law firm wants to know from that conversation. So they summarize in one or two sentences the way they think it’s important. They give it to the law firm. Law firm reads that summary and says, “oh, that’s not something we do. We can’t help you.” Not knowing that there were 17 other things that caller stated that might very well be relevant to what the law firm wants and does so that quality assurance is really, really important. Number two, training, you gotta figure out to what extent you’re able to train these folks. Are you able to speak to them on a monthly basis, weekly basis? Are you able to give them documents that summarize what you do, that give answers to frequently asked questions, that give them scripts, all of that can’t go, you know, overlooked. We have to know what’s possible.
Now let’s say you said to me, “Gary, I have to use someone from an outsourced call center. What’s the best way to do it?” You got to go back to the term KISS, the acronym, right? Keep it simple. Silly, not stupid, because I don’t want to be mean. Keep it simple, silly, right? Just keep it simple. Keep the conversation. There was one, one script I read recently, I reviewed recently for a law firm. They had 50, five-zero questions that the call center representative was asking on behalf of the law firm. In what world, in what world would I, the law firm, want answers to 50 questions from my call center representative? I don’t. I want to keep that call very simple. Is it something that’s worthy of one of two things, one of two things. Is it something that’s worthy of potentially being retained by that company? So that’s something we didn’t talk about, but they—they really should have the access or ability and know-how to retain qualified leads. Or two, is it something that I want warm-transferred to my, to my firm? So here’s the thing, right? And I keep sort of flirting with it. So let me get right to the point I don’t want to break the chain of communication. I don’t want to break the chain of communication. I know how competitive this industry is, and the moment I hang up without conveying an interest, without trying to get a case signed, without letting them know we can help, if we can help, is the moment that I give someone else an opportunity to jump in.
So, you know, those are a few things that come to mind. Seth, if anything else came to mind with respect to the call center, I guess it would be, I want to know what, what promises and standards they’re able to keep, and whether they’re keeping it. So I’m going to need some metrics and some reporting from them. So how quickly are they picking up calls? What’s their average pickup, you know, response time? What’s their average call time, you know, give me, you know, lots of times. You know, here’s the problem, right? I went, I consulted once for a law firm, and the morning—I flew in the night before and the morning before I went in, it was about 7:45 in the morning. I say, “no, it’s perfect time. I want to call a law firm now and see who’s picking up at 7:45 in the morning and see how that conversation goes.” So I call the law firm, and it went to their call center. And how do I know it went to their call center? Because their call center representative said, “good afternoon. Thank you for—good morning. Thank you for calling [call center name],” not law firm name, [call center name], so now I know, and I know the call center, so now I know, oh man, like this is, this isn’t whatever. If someone called up and had a case, they’d be like, “I’m sorry, who did I call?”
So my follow-up question to you. Assuming that it’s not a botched situation like that, right? It’s not like, “I, state your name, do solemnly swear? I state your name.” But when you, you know, if we’re not in Animal House, um, when you are dealing with the call center, right? Right? That’s not you, for whether it’s overflow or whether it’s after hours. Is, should they be finessing that they are an extension of your firm, independent? Or should, should they take ownership of that? Or should they be, should they be like doing everything they can as if it’s your firm, because it may not be the same quality, because as much as we do train, you don’t know what schmuck’s gonna show up in that seat that morning, despite your scripts and your quality control at the organization as a whole.
So that’s a very good question. I was basically trying to compromise with myself as you were speaking.
I saw the gears turning.
I really don’t like to compromise my standards. So in a real world, in an ideal world, I’d want them to be an extension of my firm, and I’d want them to be able to qualify, potentially retain. I’d want them to be able to use some brag lines, be very reassuring and compassionate. I really would want that, and if I can’t get that, then all I’m doing is lowering my standards and potentially losing out on business. So if you’re going to do this, I would try to find a company that is not your 1994 company that just takes a message and says someone will call you back. I think we’re too competitive of an industry. You know? I like to, I like to look at things that say you only have one bite at the app—okay, you know, great, great. So great, great reminder.
I think every single law firm that I’ve come in contact with, and granted, they’re usually a little bit larger volume, they’re not solo practitioners. They probably have at least one dedicated intake staff, which is a nice volume firm. Every single law firm I’m come in contact with has added a situation where, and that uses a—that use a call center, outsource call center. Has had a situation where a lead went to their outsourced call center. They got the message, and then they were never successful at getting back in touch with that claimant, even though they tried, because of the one bite of the apple scenario. We, they—that person gave us their time, right? You go back to like Glengarry Glen Ross, one of the things you’re looking for is attention. We had their attention. We had their attention on that call. We had their attention. We didn’t capitalize on their attention, and they never gave it to us again. I like to, I like to—when I compete, and I’ve competed in sports my whole life, I like to really, sort of, you know that whole cliché, leaving it all out in the field, right? I like to leave it all out on the field because I know I may not—you may not get another shot at this claimant. So if I’m going to outsource it to somebody, or even if my primary team, like there’s no breakage of the of the chain guys, I’d rather—one of my Garyisms, right? It’s better to to retain than reject, than never to retain at all. Right? If you’re not sure, sign it up. We’ll figure out what to do afterwards. If we can’t help, but do not hang up on that call without conveying an interest one way or the other.
So, as we conclude this has been awesome, I just want to come back to the beginning, because we unbelievably went deep on what we were talking about. What are the other holes in buckets that you see crowdsourcing this? Because I could tell you, as an agency owner, the amount of issues that we see just looking at firms across it is—it is one of those areas that you will always—the full employment of Gary. There’s never going to be a point where people like, “I got it.” It’s just it’s so difficult. It’s leveraging labor. But what are the other major holes that you see as we conclude here?
I think a lot of it’s having the right processes in place, having the right follow-up cadences in place, having someone at the helm that cares, that knows what to look for, having escalation processes in place. I think transparency is huge, lots of times. So before I consult with a law firm, I give them a questionnaire and ask them, hey, what’s your, one of the questions I ask them is, “Hey, what’s your qualification rate, and what’s your conversion rate?” And by that I mean, of all the leads you receive, what percentage of them qualify for representation? So I send out an agreement, or at least convey an interest to represent them. And then of those that I conveyed an interest to represent, how many did—what percent did I sign? That’s my qualification rate. That’s my conversion rate. Those numbers have to be really accurate. And lots of times for law firms, they’re not accurate, whether it’s not being able to use a CRM appropriately, whether it’s not using a consistent criteria amongst the team, clearly, whether… It’s not, you know, there are times where—I’ll give you just a very basic, silly example, but there are times where, you know, you send out an agreement, and three days later you decide that “I don’t really want that lead anymore.” So I’m not going to place it in something called lost, which meant that I wanted it and lost it. But rather, I’m going to put it into turn down. Well, no, there’s gotta be a rule that says, hey, once we send an agreement out, I don’t care if five minutes later, you know, we decide not to want it anymore. That goes against our wants, that’s a lost lead. If we decide to close it right. There’s gotta be consistency amongst how we use the CRM.
I’m gonna give you one more only because I know we’re coming to the end here. One more big, big, big, big inefficiency: the CRM that you’re using in an ideal world automatically does this. And in an unideal world, your intake team is manually doing this, which is scheduling your next communication contact point. We cannot leave it in here. You can’t say, “oh, you know what I’ll call this claimant, when I get to it tomorrow, the next day or Monday.” There’s got to be something in the CRM that creates a reminder or action item for me, the intake specialist, so that I don’t have to worry about what I remember. Because I know that my cases—that’s what we call it, the leads that are assigned to me—the CRM will tell me when I have to call next or text next, or send an email out next. And if we’re not using our CRM in that manner, there’s not a human being on earth that can handle 150 leads and do it appropriately, following the appropriate cadence and not miss something. So I think we have to make sure we’re using our CRM to our advantage.
But I could keep going on where the inefficiencies are. But again, I think it’s about accountability, it’s about transparency, it’s about appropriate management. It’s about, you know, consistent and accurate metrics. It’s all of it. But again, I’ll start—I’ll end with how we started. It is process-based. It is not subjective. It is stuff that we could create that becomes predictable and becomes a roadmap for our team. It does not have to be guesswork. It does not have to be guesswork, but it does take time. And it does take energy to create.
Well, I gotta tell you, Gary, this is like drinking from a fire hose. Some great things here. I mean, I love the idea of, in the first minute or two, saying, “I’m so glad you called us. This is exactly what we do, and we will be able to help.” And doing that upbeat I think is huge to getting the person who’s calling you, whether it’s family law, personal injury, criminal law, trust and estates, just gives them that ability to exhale and say, okay, I have a solution because they got a million things going on, and if they know you’re exactly the solution, it’s one less hurdle that everybody has to jump over. And I love that, but I’ve got a, like, I’ve been sending messages to Seth. I got like, six more questions for you, and we can’t go there today. We’re going to invite you back at the tail end of this intake series.
I was just thinking the same thing because this is—I mean, this was so good. I actually, at one point I was like, man, we should have broken halfway through and made this like a two or a three parter because we could talk about intake with you forever. So I want to thank you so much for being here with us. We value your friendship, but more importantly, we value your knowledge. You know, living the life of intake that you have, it’s so important. I think as you state, this industry is getting more and more and more competitive, and the ones who are going to compete and win are going to be the ones that are paying attention to each and every part of the life cycle, and intake is huge. So thank you, Gary, so much for being here with us today.
Hey, thank you guys. I mean, you take time out of your day to share and to bring on people to give value. There are a lot of people out there that really, they’re guessing a lot. They don’t know what to do. And I could tell you, just from personal and professional experience, all you guys are looking to do is help, and I appreciate that. Anytime I could add some value in that regard, always open to it. So if you’re listening to this and Jay and Seth recommend something, jump on it. They know what they’re talking about.
Well, thank you, Gary. Folks, that’s going to do it this week for another episode of The Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can take us on the go by subscribing to The Law Firm Blueprint podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, and you can catch our show live every week, Thursdays, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, live in our Facebook group called The Law Firm Blueprint as well as live on LinkedIn. But for me, Jay Ruane, he, Seth Price, we did a little dance and moved around during the taping of the show. And of course, Gary, thank you so much for being with us. That’s going to do it for us today. Bye for now!
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