In this episode of The Law Firm Blueprint, hosts Jay Ruane and Seth Price are joined by Tim Smith, attorney at the Mike Morse Law Firm, and Tony Chapman, fellow attorney and intake star. The group dives into the art and science of intake processes. From identifying the right traits for hiring intake personnel, to balancing empathy and sales skills, this episode is packed with actionable insights for law firms aiming to improve client engagement and conversions by executing on intake. Tim and Tony share their top five traits to look for in intake hires and their approach to scaling intake. They also discuss how to maintain quality control with remote intake staff and the role of AI in call analysis. Whether you’re just starting to build your intake team or looking to enhance your existing processes, this episode is full of valuable takeaways for executing on intake. You’ll also hear about the critical role of data in optimizing intake performance, using technology to keep clients on the phone during the signature process, and how to handle the emotional challenges intake staff face. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more episodes of The Law Firm Blueprint!
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Hello, hello and welcome to this edition of The Law Firm Blueprint. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, and with me, as always, is my man Seth Price down there in the BluShark and Price Benowitz headquarters. But we are joined today by not one, but two fabulous gentlemen, and we’re going to continue this discussion about all things intake. We are joined by Tim Smith, attorney Tim Smith from the Mike Morse law firm, as well as Tony Chapman, who is their killer intake lead person. I guess you could, you could say, because I happen to be on a call with John Nachazel last week, and he showed me some of Tony’s stats, and I was blown away. And he was like, this is our guy here. So Tim, Tony, thank you so much for being with us today as we continue this talk all about intake. Seth, what do you got for, uh, to lead us off?
Well, look, uh, thrilled. We’re in a series on intake, and we’ve talked to a lot of consultants that tell you you should do this, or you should do that, and they’re- great advice, but as Tim and Tony, I’m sure would certainly agree that giving the advice is not as easy as taking and implementing the advice, especially at scale. So I’d love to start out with you, Tim, since you’re sort of at the top of this pyramid, tell me about some of the things that as you’ve built out what is now a juggernaut, which is one of the largest, you know, regional firms in the country. What have you found? You know what works, and what are some of the things that you thought would work along the way that might not have?
Sure, thanks for that nice introduction Seth and Jay. So I guess what I would start with is recognizing the importance of intake. You alluded to speaking with John and Mike before, they routinely and consistently will say that intake is the most important department in our firm. Now, a lot of people might not think that. They’ll think it’s the trial attorneys or different people like that. Trial attorneys can’t do what they need to do if the case isn’t signed in the front end, and so intake is viewed in our group, rightfully so, our firm, rightfully so, as the most important group in our firm. And what you need for any good group, are good people. So it comes down to finding the right people, and the traits that we look for to identify those right people.
So I’ll take, I’ll take that, that bait. Talk to me a little bit about what are the people that have worked for- you know, you know, everybody has said, for myself, I started off with recent college grads who were going to law school, and I had great energy for two years. But when law school fell out of favor, especially during covid, that model kind of fell apart. So what do you see as being a sustainable person that not only performs but stays with it for a while.
Sure, so there’s really five traits that we look for. Okay, first one, extroverts, people that are just they’re friendly, they enjoy talking, they’re sociable. I like to say they’re people that are callers. Our prospective clients and kind of feel their smile across the phone. Okay, number two would be good listeners. Okay. A lot of people are very, you know, gracious, and they can, you know, speak, and they’re sociable, but they might like to hear themselves talk more than listen, right? And so when I’m involved in some of the intake interviews, I really kind of hone in on that. Are these people that are talking over me. Are these people that are just kind of not really paying attention to what I’m saying, because they’re just waiting to kind of, you know, be able to talk again. So good listening skills. Number three, and this is a really, really important one in intake: empathy, empathy and not only having empathy, but the ability to express empathy to our callers, these are people that are going through a very traumatic time in their life, possibly going through the claims or litigation process for the first time. And it’s you know, our intake representatives who are our first contact with these prospective clients, to show that requisite empathy for what they’re going through. Number four, persistence, tenacity, doggedness, that, you know, deep desire in our case, to get that client signed. Now, you know, got some examples here, a recent one, actually, that I could get into later on, if you’d like, in terms of kind of a call that that lacked that persistence, that was disappointing, and it really shows what can happen in that case. And then lastly, emotional intelligence, not only having, you know, the ability to understand others emotions, but the intake person’s emotions. You know, they’re going through a high volume of calls, difficult calls, again, touched upon that, traumatic calls. You know, how are they going to deal with the other people’s emotions? And equally, if not more importantly, how are they going to deal with their own emotions, dealing with those calls, if you’re getting, you know, calls from loved ones that lost somebody every week, and week, and week, that can wear on somebody on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a long term basis, and we have concern for, you know, our employees, you know, well being, and how they deal with those types of calls. So those are really the five traits that we really try to focus on early on in the hiring process.
Before I touch, I’ll bring it to Tony to talk about the lawyer aspect. Let me ask you this, you know, again, you’re focused on the PI world. It’s going to be different than the fee for service world. But specifically in your world, how do you balance the sales skill, right? Somebody who’s like, you know, red meat wants to sell, check that off the box. Get the great stats someone like Tony [inaudible], versus the empathy, you know, customer service. Because in general, as you just said, you want to hear somebody speak. You want to be able to get that out. Is it more essential to have the sales piece, or is it more essential to have somebody who is empathetic, who can engage and extract things from people, rather than just, you know, more push to get the quick sale and move on to the next.
I feel it goes hand in hand, you know, I start off, you know, with the empathy, with, you know, making sure I’m getting all the requisite information, making sure that I, the caller feels comfortable with our firm and wants- but at the same time, I also work with the urgency of, you know, not, trying not to let them off the phone, and making sure that they do sign with us and retain us so it goes hand in hand.
Understood. Let me, let me be more specific. If you’re looking for talent, would somebody with prior sales talent be what you’re looking for, or is it somebody with a different- what skill set are you looking for when you’re hiring to to get that great balance?
Oh, I mean, a sales background certainly helps. However, our, our staff is, you know, come from diverse backgrounds. Some don’t have sales backgrounds. And these are callers. They’re calling us, you know, they want to retain us. So, you know, even if you don’t have the strongest sales skills. I mean, they’re, they’re walking onto the lot they want to buy a car. You just got to kind of let them know that this is the right, you know, vehicle for them. You know, it doesn’t require a high level of, you know, sale or necessarily a sales background. I would take someone with empathy over someone with a sales background.
Gotcha. Where, if you crowd sourced. This is for you guys, where have you found, and this is something, you know, every- we get this question, probably more than anything else, where do you go to find those unicorns? I mean, I know having spoken to Mike, some people are people been part of his, bumped into in life, you know, in different customer service pieces of his life. But you know, hostesses at restaurants, etc. Where have you guys seen the talent that stuck come from?
For the most part, I don’t know what the most part, but a lot of people will call for- will come from call center, you know, roles. You know, every once in a while, we’ll get people with prior legal experience. That certainly isn’t a requisite for us. We look for more for traits versus that type of experience. Sure, short term, you can plug and play a little bit better if somebody has that requisite, you know, prior legal experience, but they don’t have the right traits, they can burn out quickly, and it’s just not a good, you know, fit for the intake role. So it’s really people just coming from, whether a true call center or just a a role where they had a lot of engagement and interaction with people, and ideally with a twist of like, some problem solving there.
Gotcha before I flip to Jay, my question would be, and either of you guys feel free to answer, in the proce- understanding Tony, you’re a lawyer, you’re at a different level, you’re, you’re, you’ve done this forever, but as you slot people in, how much of the process is scripted versus how much is talking points that have to get across?
For our new hires and for people learning the ropes? Yeah, I believe we’ve relied more heavily on scripting, to making sure, you know, making sure that they’re hitting all the points, but you’re walking this delicate tightrope to where they don’t sound too robotic. And when I’m training, usually, first part training is actually just letting them listen to myself or a more senior member, take calls, and then once they start taking calls themselves, work on the script as you get more comfortable, make it your own so it doesn’t sound quite so robotic. Yeah, hope that answered your question.
Ted, you want to throw anything in on that.
No, no, I- exactly right. You know, we do have scripting. We do believe in shadowing and role playing in the early portion of the training. And as I always like to say, is I like to see people shadow with multiple different people. You know, Tony’s, you know, our top dog, our closer. He’s got a certain style to him. We have other effective both attorney and non, non attorney people in intake that have, you know, different personalities, different ways that they handle calls, and they’re done successfully. So I think it’s good for people to kind of shadow with, you know, multiple different people as they learn to develop their own personality and style within the confines of our expectations for our intake group.
Jay?
Yeah, so I have a question, because you talked a little bit about emotional intelligence at the top of the show. And you know, one of the questions I have for you as, as a team that has had a large number of intake people over years, I am sure you have found people especially that are taking calls where a family member has died or or family circumstances have tragically been changed, like overnight, the emotional toll not only on the client or the family of the, of the, of the client who is calling in, but that can transfer over to an empath, a person who really, you know is, is hearing this stuff and feeling the emotion from the caller. Um, how do you help your team deal with that weighing on them? Is it? Hey, you know, next week you’re, we’re moving you to a new role where you’re not going to have to take calls. So you can de stress a little. Is there a rotation that you use? Is it? Is it letting people self, you know, identify and say, I just took a doozy of an intake. I need a few minutes to process this. You know, how do you handle that? Because, and the second part of that question is, is there a run rate? Is there a churn rate, where after 18 months or 24 months or 36 months, like you see, naturally, people just get burned out from intake and they have to step away for some, for either permanently or for a little while?
Yeah, yeah. Great questions. And Rhonda Gibson, our call center manager, the call center manager, does a really good job with this, and both in the interview process and in the training process and throughout interactions with our staff, she’s regularly bringing that up, that if you get off a tough call that just really hit home with a, you know, young person dying, or just just one of those emotional calls that you’re kind of alluding to, Jay, if you need some time, let me know. If you need 15 minutes, a half hour, an hour, you need some time, just kind toof step away, gather yourself. You need to do that because it’s important that you are in a good emotional state for you know, for yourself. In terms of the burnout rates, what we like to say is, and again, that’s why we really focus hard on trying to find and identify the right people in the training process. We’re certainly not perfect, but with these traits and really kind of focusing in on those people, we truly believe that there’s a certain person that’s really fit for intake, you know, Tony, I think could, you know, talk to this, you know, he taught, he tried some litigation work for a while, as I did back in the day, you know. And for him, it ultimately wasn’t a great fit, but he found intake, and it’s like a perfect role for him. He’s got the perfect personality. I don’t mean to speak for him, but I think he loves it, I think he has a passion for it, you know. And we really look for people like that, and in terms of, so, we like to say that, you know this, this isn’t an introductory role. This is a role that, you know, it’s for the right person. And if you find that right person, they’re not going to burn up. It’s, going to be a long term position for them. Now, we’re all about, you know, growth and opportunities here at that firm. So certainly, if somebody looks to, you know, expand their horizons and venture into different groups, it’s for their choice because of just wanting to try a different role, as opposed to necessarily burning out from an intake role.
Tony, I want to pivot to you for a moment. You know, one thing that I’ve done in my own firm is trying to integrate the attorney into the intake process, and it’s been, you know, paid huge dividends. It’s awesome. And the fact that you guys are so far ahead of the curve is just awesome to watch. Tell me a little bit about, you know, we talked even pre show that you sort of are on phones, but are obviously there for escalations and people that need to speak to an attorney, etc. Tell me a little bit about how you, you know, found yourself leveraging, you know, obviously you could, if you weren’t doing this, if you had a different widget that was outside of law, I’m sure you would sell that great. But how have you leveraged being a lawyer into this process above and beyond just being empathetic, etc?
Sure, I mean one, you know, just recognizing, you know, the validity of a case and whether or not there is something that we want and to, you know, spend our time with. But also, I can say the exact same thing that a non attorney has said. And, you know, but because, you know, my name is Tony Chapman, I’m one of the attorneys at Mike Morris. They listen and they sign. And, you know, Mike does it even better than I do. You know, sometimes when I have, you know, a problem with someone, you know, I put Mike on and he’ll say the exact same thing that I said, and then, well, you’re Mike Morse, okay, you know. But really, you know, there’s no real magic bullet. A lot of times I’m saying the exact same thing, but just the fact that’s coming from an attorney. It gets a client to want to, you know, come and, you know, be with us. It helps close, close them.
You know, you can tell you’re a real talent, when you get cases right, because there’s some cases that are just coming either from brand that’s out there, referrals, where it’s, you know, you or they’ll go somewhere else, versus someone who said, I’ve just spoken to four different law firms, or whether they say it or not, you know that that’s what’s going on based on how they’re speaking. How do you address that? You know, you guys are in a large shop. You do have the brand recognition, you market as well as anybody. But talk to me a little bit about when you move from this is, you know, mine to lose versus I’m in a jump ball situation. How do you, you know, leverage your position to try to give the best possible advantage?
Sure. One of the things that our law firm does, that Mike does, I’m not sure if other firms do. We have a state of the firm, meeting four times a year quarterly, where they update, uh, us on our number. So I had the ammo in my back pocket when someone says I’ve talked to four other firms, why should I go to your firm? Well, last year, we settled over $200 million in settlements alone. We’re the largest law firm in Michigan. And we’re that way for a reason. You’re going to get outstanding customer service, you know, XYZ. And you know, I have that there in my back pocket. Also, just on a personal level, I can just talk to, I can speak with callers in, you know, more plain English. I don’t use a lot of legalese. I will relate to them. They, you know, they will say something to me. I work at an auto factory. Oh, what a coincidence. I, you know, actually paid my way through college, working at Buick on the assembly line, pushing piston. This is my daughter. Oh, your daughter- my daughter just entered first grade too, boy, you know. And just bring it to a personal level, so that, that’s, that’s what I do.
So I can pipe in here. I got a question for you. You know, I’m in the fee for service. You know, as a criminal defense lawyer, we gotta get paid. You guys kind of need to get a signature. Lot easier to give a signature than go into your pocket. But I’m sure there are objections that you hear regularly on the phone, and I take it from my limited experience in PI, I know some lawyers who are like, I’ll settle every case within six months. We’re not going to trial. I’ll get you the best offer in six months, or four months, and you’ll be able to have money in your pocket, you know, before the other firm has even opened up their file on you, do you guys have scripted answers to those objections, sort of going back to the Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan Belfort, here’s your objections binder. They say, I gotta ask my wife. You say this. They say, I don’t have that money. You say this, you know, do you have that or is it like? Because I know there’s got to be people in your market that are telling people, I can settle this in six months and I’ll get you the top dollar, when really you can’t get top dollar at six months. Like you really can’t.
Yeah, that specific objection, I what I come back with this? I’m just going to be open and honest and upfront with you. These cases, on average, take anywhere from six months to two years. Typically take over a year. I don’t get paid until you get paid. If I could have this check here for you tomorrow, I would, but that’s just not how it is. Any other attorney out there that you speak with who tells you they can get this settled for you sooner than that is, you know, full of it, for lack of a better term, you know, I’m just going to be hon- and people appreciate that. They like me telling you right up front, you know, this is how it is. It’s going to take this long, but we’re not going to do anything that is going to hold it up, you know, the insurance company is going to drag their feet and wait to the very last minute before they have to pay. So to answer, you know, I, yes, we do have, you know, scripts when we’re training to tell people how to deal with objections that particular one. That’s how I respond to it. And I just find, yeah, being honest and upfront with them right from the get go really helps.
So yeah- go ahead Jay.
I got, I got one more question then I’ll throw back to you Seth. So you know, in the last decade, probably in the last five years, really, since Covid happened, there’s been an explosion of technology that firms can use to engage potential clients, get them to sign. Are you guys using this technology to stay on the phone with them, ship them a retainer agreement and having them sign on their phone? So it’s done right then and there? Because I know back in the day it was, I’m gonna mail you out a retainer agreement, with a and, and the, the revolutionary thing was with a self addressed stamped envelope, right? Like I can remember sending out retainer agreements with an envelope with postage on them and thinking, I hope I didn’t spend 41 cents and they’re never gonna send it back. And I was thinking, these people are steaming my stamp off of the envelope to put it on their electric bill and ruing the day that I gave away 41 cents. But I gotta suspect that you’re now keeping them on the phone and having them sign while you’re on the phone with them to confirm that it’s getting done.
Yes. And you know I said earlier, I kind of work without a script. When it comes to that, though, I do have a script. We send them the agreement via Adobe sign, and then we have a script with screenshots so we can actually see what they’re looking at. I’m going to walk you through this. You have to click continue, start. You know, do this. I stay right on the phone with them, and then we have an inbox where we see the agreement come back in, and I wait until I see that, until it comes in, and I save it right to their file. Right, then, they’re, all while they’re still on the phone. Then I do my conclusion, my wrap up, where I let them know what the next step is, the file opening. If it’s been a pleasurable experience, and hopefully it has, I’ll also ask him to throw me a Google review. And then we wrap up. But yes.
You guys are asking for Google reviews in the intake?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, you know, one, you know, I mean, yeah, exactly. That’s usually when they’re at their happiest.
I couldn’t agree more. We made that a quarterly rock for our intake people. They get judged and incentivized on it.
Exactly. So, yeah, we’re asking for them right there at the intake level, for sure. And when we change the status in our software to the fact that it’s been closed, and one, it auto generates a text to the client with our firm number and a link to our Google review page. And that’s, you know you’ll get this link. If you’ve been happy with me, I hope you have been. You might give me five stars? You want to mention my name Tony?
Awesome. So my question is, as you’ve scaled and you have a substantial intake team, and this is for Tim or Tony, what are some of the best practices you use for quality control? Because not everybody’s a Tony, and you are sitting there with people at varying levels who have great moments and not so great moments. How do you make sure that you stay consistent?
We record all of our calls, and our call center manager will listen to certainly not all of them. It’d be great if she could, or we could have somebody listen to all of them. We’re not listening to all of them, but she’s at least listening to a handful per person per week, grading those out, and then sharing those results with team members and providing coaching as necessary. But it’s really always something that we’re looking into. And I’ve had a discussion with Michael here over the last, you know, couple of days about ways that we might want to improve that to capture, you know, more of these calls to review and do even further coaching on this stuff, because as good of an intake part, the department that we have, and you know, great staff and team members we have, such as Tony’s and others, all of us can improve, and our intake group can certainly improve, and we’re really striving to figure out ways to do that.
Great points. Gary Falkowitz, who’s kicked off the series, has been a big advocate of recording before it was cool. One of the things we’ve been experimenting with and playing with has been the AI reading of those calls. Have you guys moved in any of that space yet? Just to supplement because you can only listen to so many, as far as AI grading, is that something you guys have jumped into yet?
Absolutely, and it’s funny to say that because we’ve partnered up, we use Zoom in our, at our firm, so zoom contact center, and both Rhonda as well as our Chief Information Officer, are working with Zoom. And I believe we’re one of the few firms, if not the only firm in the country to be working with them on an AI component to our intake processes. And we’re kind of fine tuning and finalizing aspects of that now, and it’ll allow us to then identify the key aspects of calls, shorten the time to be able to review the nature of those calls and then work towards, you know, the coaching and process improvements and what have you. So we’re really, really excited about that. Hope to launch it here in the next, next couple of months.
That area is tremendous. It’s just the next big thing for intake, which is, you know, the, you know, besides, you know, prompts and things like that. But that’s going to be real time. I think it’s going to be another few moments away. But this is already here. We just haven’t leveraged it yet.
Yeah, absolutely.
We get some real time feedback with our zoom. They do have a little thing where, if perhaps we’re speaking too fast, or if we inter- do a little frowny face, you can see it right there on the screen, as your talk- as you’re speaking with them, if the client is reacting positively, there’s a smiley face. And we can also, you know, listen to our own calls. It will give us a grade, you know, if, you know, if the intake staff so is inclined to, you know, do some self training as well. And, you know, listen to their calls. I, I realize I say um way more than what I thought I did. I you know, so it’s, it’s amazing, like, what you’re saying, where AI is going with this, and, you know, I’m excited for it, and I think it’s certainly going to help out with with intake and with our new staff, especially in training.
Can I ask a question? Are you guys using all people in your office doing intake? Are they work from home? Are they remote? Because I think, you know, that’s something that a lot of people in our audience are thinking, do I, how do I, how do I use available people in the market, if they’re not necessarily in my market, but I can find better talent outside? Are you guys, or is your intake all done inside your you know, your bat cave in your headquarters?
Yeah, you touched upon a couple of those points. In fact, I just raised those during a presentation I made yesterday. Now we are primarily as a law firm as a whole, we’re a hybrid firm, most people work, you know, some days in the office, some days outside. Intake is the exception. Primarily, everybody except Mr. Chapman here work remotely. Tony’s one of our only intake representatives in the office almost every day, which is good, because every so often we do have clients just coming right in, and so we do need somebody there. And who better than Tony to be there if they have to, kind of, you know, you know, get that case finalized. But no, we primarily utilize remote group, remote workers during the interview process. We go through things to gage, to make sure that they have an environment that would, you know, enable them to successful, you know, to be successful in an intake role, you know, a dedicated part of their house that’s quiet, that they can concentrate that they can make calls. Does the person seem to have the right drive to be successful working from home? Because, you know, there’s these parts where you’re looking at from the employee perspective, can they be successful in that in that role working from home? There’s a lot of benefits to it, right? You know, you avoid the commute time, you’re in a comfortable environment that hopefully will come across in those phone calls and everything, but from an employer perspective, and it’s one thing that what Michael and John kinda have built here that allows us to do this more is, do you have the database, the metrics to be able to monitor and make sure that people are doing what you expect them to do? If you’re going to give them the privilege of working remotely? Do you have the technology to determine if they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing? And we feel like we have that for the folk- for the most part. So it’s worked out really good. And to your point, Jay, it allows us to kind of expand our environment in terms of where people are coming from. You know, just interviewed somebody from Ohio earlier in the week. We’ve got somebody in North Carolina, and occasionally we actually go with internationals, and we can even broaden the scope that far. So it really has enabled us to, you know, to even recruit stronger people by not just focusing on the metropolitan Detroit area.
So I have a follow up to that then. Are, I know, you are a data driven law firm, and that is something that is, you know, part of the success story of the Mike Morse law firm is the data driven decision making that has been involved. Let me ask you this, as I say um, Tony, are you sharing that data with your intake team and and let me, let me sort of tee up the scenario. You’ve got a dozen or so people that are taking calls regularly, but if they’re not in the same room seeing that somebody else is taking a call. Oftentimes you can get people say, well, you know, this person’s not picking up as much as- they’re not working as hard as I am working, because everyone’s in their own little world. And how do you deal with that? On an intake team? Are you sharing? Hey, you know, person A did 40 calls this week. Person B did 55. person C said, did 17? Now, 17 could be 17 fatalities that are a two hour phone call versus somebody. It’s a it’s a standard missed wreck on a 20/40 policy. That’s good. You know that the phone call could be done in 15 minutes, but, but do you ever run into situations where intake team members are saying, I don’t think somebody else is carrying their weight. And how do you deal with that? Because they can’t see each other doing the work. Are you sharing that data with them in like, weekly meetings?
Yeah.
I think our audience, you know, if they’re hiring remote, they’re going to get some, especially if they’ve got a legacy employee that’s been around for, you know, it’s 5, 10, or 15 years with them, and they now go to their first remote employee, because economies work better in that favor. You can get some people back at home saying this new person isn’t doing what they should be doing. They’re not carrying their weight enough, and it can cause dissension. So how do you deal with that in your office?
Sure. So weekly, we send out a weekly report, actually, two of them, one that breaks down the amount of calls each staff member took, amount signed, amount converted, and both a year to date, and a weekly. We also send a separate report that actually breaks it down to the second as to how many, how long each person’s been on a phone call for, and their percentage of time on phone call, incoming and outgoing, and in real time, we, the intake staff is communicating via our zoom [inaudible] like team chatter sort of set up. Sorry, I’m not a tech guy, and you can see right there, you know, John Doe, green dot, is available. Jane Doe, red phone. If everyone is red phoned or, you know, red dot, on break or whatever, and calls are coming in, one person is just staying green, then, yeah, that’s a problem. And, you know, fortunately we, you know, we haven’t had too many problems with that here. But yeah, we can see it in real time through our phone software. And there’s weekly reports that both break down number of calls, amount of time on the phone, etc.
In fact, I am just gonna add on one quick thing there, Jay everything Tony said is 100% spot on. But we can even take it a step further and identify through the technology that we have if there’s some call avoidance going on, if a call was routed to a particular person and they didn’t pick it up, we know if there was a, you know, a legitimate reason they didn’t pick it up, or an illegitimate reason. And there’s been, you know, occasions where there’s had to been some coaching and further more serious talks with people with, with call avoidance.
So okay, now, now I’m going deep into this rabbit hole. I’m not going to take you too much further, but here’s the question, then, how do you know when you need to hire another intake person because bandwidth is an issue. And you don’t want to be in a situation where you’ve got calls rolling over, I’m assuming, to an answering service or something, and you’re not able to give attention. So is it, hey, when my people are at 80% that’s when I got to start hiring next. If it’s I can wait to 90 I mean, where is it? Where do you draw the line, at these people are firing on all cylinders. So I got to get more people into the pipeline so that they could be ready for more intakes.
So a couple of things there. We do have a vendor that we use primarily for rollover calls. So if it’s calls that everyone’s just too busy on, you know, we don’t want them just sitting on hold, or don’t utilize, certainly, a recording, you know, message system. So we utilize a vendor in that regard. We are otherwise 24/7 so we have people working, you know, through the night, and what have you. In terms of, you know, determining, you know, staffing capacity of everything. We use something called a heat map, and we can break down, and we, you know, we got it broken down days of the week, hours of the day. And we can tell exactly when we are historically busy from a, you know, year to date perspective, from a month to month perspective, from a week to week perspective, and we can identify the amount of calls, like, for instance, yeah, you know, the busiest day of the week for us overall calls is Mondays, followed by Tuesdays, not that far off. Sometimes, actually, Tuesdays can be busier, but primarily Mondays. The slowest day, not surprisingly, Sundays, the bus- the slowest specific time of the week is one o’clock to three o’clock on Thursdays. Not sure why that would be the case, but it’s one o’clock to three o’clock on Thursdays. So that’s. We have our intake, weekly staff meetings, because it’s a little bit slower then. So it’s just amazing. So we can utilize that heat map, and you can, you know, you can determine the average call time. So if somebody has, like, a 10 minute average, not somebody, but if we are averaging 10 minutes per call, and you have X amount of calls during a given time period, and you have to, you know, reflect, you know, be prepared for overlap calls. Not every call is going to end and the next one stop, so all of that you can determine, Okay, I’m going to need two to three, or three to four intake reps on call at that time. So that’s how we determine that.
That’s great. I mean, it really comes down to the data, right? And
Absolutely.
Informing yourself and paying attention to it. And paying attention to and if you’re not paying attention to your data, you’re not going to be able to make these informed decisions. And so I think that’s one of the things that people can take from this session here, is start looking at the data a little, you know, unfortunately, some of us look at it, you know, once a quarter or once a year, but it sounds like, you know, you guys are looking at it much more regularly, so that you can make sure that you’re getting the best out of your team, and you’re getting the best resources to provide to your clientele.
On the executive level, we look at, after our brief introduction, during our, you know, weekly meetings, we probably spend a good half hour going through data for the entire team, and then during our intake weekly meeting, same thing. We’ll go through the data, and you know, if there’s concerns, then we’ll, we’ll discuss that. But yeah, it’s, it’s the firm, as you alluded to, Jay, is extremely, extremely data driven, and it lets everybody know, you know where they’re at and you know where some of the kind of pinch points are and what we need to do, and then they can start working on what you need to do to alleviate those pinch points.
You know, it’s really fascinating to me to see such a successful law firm that is data driven when, if you go back 20, 30, 50, years ago, all of the lawyers that I had talked to when I started out my career said it’s a science, it’s not a science. It’s more of an art. You kind of, you don’t have to look at the hard numbers. You just get a feeling for people. And what we’re seeing is that the best, the most successful law firms, are the ones that said, no, no, let’s apply data science to this and take it to the next level. And all of those people who were saying, it’s not really a science, it’s an art, and I have a feel for it. Their numbers are lower on their settlements. They’re not closing people on a fee for service scale. They’re not paying attention to their marketing. So obviously, you guys and your law firm have done phenomenal with that, and it’s great to see your success. Seth, that’s going to do it for us here this week on The Law Firm Blueprint. Tim, Tony, thank you so much for being with us. It was really amazing to get, you know, get a conversation with the boots on the ground like Seth and I were talking about. We’ve talked to a lot of consultants, and consultants can tell you all the best practices, but it’s the people who actually have boots on the ground that can tell you how it goes down in the real world. And so Tim and Tony, thank you so much for being with us today to talk about what actually goes down in an intake department.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, thanks guys.
Thank you gentlemen. Really appreciate it.
Yeah, we appreciate it. So folks that’s going to do it for us here in The Law Firm Blueprint. Of course, you can catch us live every week, 3pm Eastern, 12pm Pacific, in The Law Firm Blueprint, Facebook group or live on LinkedIn. Just follow either Seth or myself, and you’ll be able to catch our live shows. Of course, if you want to take us on the go, be sure to download The Law Firm Blueprint podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to leave us a five star review. Tim, Tony, thanks again, so much for being with us here on The Blueprint. Seth, that’s going to do it. Everybody we’ll have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next time on The Law Firm Blueprint. Bye for now!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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