Grow Your Firm with Better Client Intake

Law firms looking to sign more clients need an intake process that’s streamlined, simple, and convenient.

Every time a new lead reaches out, you have limited time to catch their attention—78% of leads go with the first business that they connect with. And if your client intake process is confusing, disorganized, or slow? You’re going to miss out on potential leads.

Work smarter, not harder, on client intake

74% of law firms already struggle with spending too much time on administrative tasks.

If you want an intake process that turns your firm’s leads into clients, you need a process that helps you save time and provide a better intake experience.

Legal intake automation can help

A robust legal CRM can help you automate key parts of your intake process, clearing the way for:

• Faster response times
• More consistent communication
• Easier intake processes
• Fewer frustrated leads

Most importantly, you’ll be able to sign more leads in less time.

Three problems, three solutions

Are too many leads falling through the cracks? Inefficient client intake workflows might be the culprit.

Most law firms suffer from:

• Too little time to efficiently onboard clients
• Insufficient lead tracking and intake reporting capabilities
• Siloed intake processes and client matter management tools

Implementing the right client intake software can help your firm solve all three issues at once.

Solution #1: Streamlining client intake with automation

Your attorneys and intake staff have enough on their plates already—and while fast response times are incredibly important, there’s no need to manually respond to every new lead at superhuman speed.

Instead, it’s time to start putting legal intake automation to work for your firm.

Here are just a few of the potential benefits.

Faster responses and follow-ups

Less than 10% of prospective clients report hearing back from a law firm within 15 minutes of reaching out—but your firm is 100 times more likely to connect with them if you can send a response in the first 5 minutes.

Using the client intake tools included in a legal CRM, your firm can send automated responses, follow-ups, and reminders before your leads move on with another firm.

You can even personalize these messages using the information included in your new lead’s contact or intake forms.

Catching leads’ attention with texted responses

Many firms rely almost exclusively on email and phone calls to connect with leads, but emails get lost in your leads’ busy inboxes (or even worse, their spam folders).

Implementing automated text responses after a lead first reaches out is a great way to catch their attention fast.

You can even let them know what number to expect a call from—they’ll be more likely to answer when a known member of your team gives them a call.

Smart intake forms

Your CRM should also allow you to build out logic-based client forms to guide your leads through the intake process.

Ideally, your contact and intake forms should be mobile-friendly and easy to fill out on the go.

Anything you can do to increase convenience for leads will decrease the number of leads you lose from the intake process.

Benefits of logic-based forms

Unlike traditional intake forms, logic-based forms can be configured to change their fields depending on case type and previous responses.

This reduces the number of fields your leads will need to fill in and helps you personalize the intake experience to the needs of every user.

With the right setup, intelligent intake forms can even automatically qualify or disqualify leads, so your intake staff knows immediately whether to take the case.

Solution #2: Implementing tracking and reporting

Another reason many law firms struggle to get intake right?

A lack of perspective on what’s working in their intake processes.

It’s hard to get a sense of what’s going wrong—or right—with your intake when you don’t have the right tools. Ideally, your law firm should have the ability to:

Track your leads through the intake process

• Identify where the leads who sign are coming from
• Analyze lead conversion rate to find the ROI on your marketing efforts

Track your leads

The intake dashboard included in a legal CRM can track where each of your leads is in the intake process—and send automated reminders to keep things running smoothly.

Increasing transparency in this way can also boost your team’s accountability. Any time a lead falls out of the pipeline, you’ll be able to see who reached out to them and when each attempt at contact was made.

Understanding conversion rates

You also want a software solution that generates robust intake reports. These reports help you better understand conversion rates and other key metrics.

They also allow you to break down your leads by source to see where your most qualified leads are coming from—and which leads are most likely to sign with your firm.

Fine-tuning your marketing efforts

Whether you work with a marketing firm or handle your marketing in-house, your marketing strategy can almost always benefit from strategic adjustments.

Intake reports help you understand which of your marketing efforts is bringing in leads that sign—and which of them seem to be missing the mark.

You can even share your reports with your marketing team to help them fine-tune your marketing efforts and boost your ROI on marketing spend.

Solution #3: Integrating your workflows

Law firms use lots of different tools to accomplish their tasks. Your client intake software should integrate seamlessly with them.

With the right integrations in place, you can save time for your attorneys while also making the transition from lead to client as painless as possible.

Saving time with integrations

One of the easiest ways to boost efficiency and cut down on tedious tasks like manual data entry is to integrate your CRM software with the other software tools you use every day.

In particular, you may want to look for intake tools that will integrate with:

• Your legal practice management software
• Any time tracking or billing software you use
• Your email accounts
• Document software such as, Office 365

Eliminating double data entry

With these integrations in place, you can automatically populate future forms and communications with the information you collect during the intake process.

When you don’t have to manually enter client information into each different software, there’s less opportunity for errors and mistakes to be introduced—and you’ll save your firm a lot of time, too.

Sign more clients in less time with Law Ruler

Law Ruler’s robust CRM is specifically designed to help law firms optimize their client intake process.

In addition to a wide range of intake automation tools, customizable reporting dashboards, and software integrations, Law Ruler offers:

• A unique built-in softphone
• Effortless, one-click e-signature
• A fully optimized cross-platform mobile app
• Best-in-class implementation support to help you get the most from our software

To see how we can help your firm streamline the intake process, get in touch today to schedule a demo.