The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

It’s always been important for law firms to archive the entire set of communications between attorneys, staff and clients (and leads).     And, that’s become easier to do, over time, as technology has advanced .     The cloud made it easier to access that data across devices and in different places; it also democratized the buy-in and continuing costs for law firm technology, so more law firms could access it.   Case management software, as a relational database, allowed for attorneys to capture data across systems, and organize it via matters.     Customer relationship management software exists, in part, so that attorneys can aggregate lead data.     Even texting, typically done on lawyers’ own smartphones, has made it into the official record, as it were – because there are now business texting applications, and many softwares are building in text messaging as a feature.     This is important for two main reasons.  First, ...

Hiring is rough right now.  And, that turned around in a heartbeat.  Over the course of a single quarter, the employer’s market become an employee’s market – with no signs of slowing down.  It’s got law firms everywhere rethinking how and why they hire.     One trend that is manifesting is that attorneys are beginning to expand their vision of who can and should be hired by a law firm, by looking at non-traditional roles within the law firm.   For the most part, law firms have hired for three roles: lawyers, paralegals and administrative staff.  But, as law firms begin to reformulate how they operate, that has opened up roles for human resource managers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, sales directors, intake specialists, customer success associates, and similar roles – that you far more often see in technology companies.     In some cases, these new hires are cheaper and carry less baggage than do attorneys.  In so...

In the last piece in this short series, we discussed how important it is for law firms to be focused on engaging potential clients.  That’s how you bait the hook; but, there’s still the matter of reeling in those leads – and, to accomplish that, you’ll need a way for clients, following an initial engagement, to take a next step, in order to advance the process.  And, that’s where many law firms fall down, because they haven’t set up any kind of system, and don’t know what the next step is themselves, or because they don’t have a simple and convenient option for clients to move the ball forward.   The first thing to figure out is just what you want your potential clients to do, after they’ve been engaged.  The logical next step for most law firms is to schedule an initial consultation call.  That’s largely because attorneys tend to clean up in those conversations, converting leads at a high rate.   So, how do you get to that stage, as quickly as possible,...

Lawyers often focus on their own expectations when it comes to client intake.  They assume a lot about legal consumers’ preferences, without actually investigating what those preferences really are.  In that situation, it usually ends up that law firms construct intake programs that don’t reflect relevant trends respecting legal consumers, and that are created for the ease of use of the law firm, and not for the ease of use of the consumer.     But, we’re firmly entrenched in the convenience economy; and, everything a law firm does to engage legal consumers should be based on the ease, convenience and preferences of those legal consumers.   T he potential client is the hero of the client journey, and that’s where the law firm’s focus should be.  Every aspect of the intake process should address engagement, because 90% of the time, the law firm that effectively engages a new lead, closes that lead.     That means that all of your online content sho...