Generating leads is one thing and converting leads into intake is another, perfecting the science of both will make your law firm profitable.
You might be investing valuable dollars in getting an influx of leads, but without optimizing the intake process the leads may slip through the cracks.
At a personal injury firm, if the client intake process is not effective it can create back and forth calls, missed information, emails and manual paperwork, it can be frustrating for both clients and staff. The worst outcome from this frustration is loss of business, and reputation. And for any lawyer, reputation is everything.
- What is Legal Client-Intake
- Capture Paperless Intake Using Cloud Based Intake Forms
- Follow up with leads at the right time
- Automate Client Intake Tasks
- Seamless Intake to Case conversion
- Get action oriented insights into your legal practice
- Bonus: Track your Marketing Campaigns and Return on Investment (ROI)
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is legal client-intake?
The legal client-intake is a process of collecting detailed case information from prospects in order to correctly qualify leads and accept them as cases. During this process law firms may run conflict checks and provide initial consultation to the prospective clients. At the end of this intake process, the law firm may accept or decline representation to the client.
This is crucial, since a law firm will invest a considerable amount of time and resources, each law firm should be equipped with tools that help them to rightly identify cases that they should accept.
But making your client intake process streamlined isn’t hard as long as you have the right tools. Here are 5 ways CloudLex(R) can help you optimize and streamline your Client Intake Management process.
Capture paperless intake using cloud based intake forms
If you’re still using mounds of paper, word or Excel sheet to track intake then you’re probably not converting as much intake into cases as you possibly could. Add to this the plethora of errors you’ll encounter in this manual process.
Your clients can book a trip to Madagascar or new furniture for their living room instantly on their phone, so they expect, at least, this level of modernity from their law firm. In this day and age, handing your prospects a pen and paper for intake is like handing them a chisel so they can carve their info into a rock—you appear ancient!
Allow your potential clients to fill out online intake forms at their convenience. The intake form covers everything including case type, date of incident, lead contact details, referral source, incident address, injury specific questionnaire, and an injury checklist.
A firm’s intake forms drive the entire intake process. Our intelligent client intake forms/questionnaires allow you to dictate a consistent, mistake-free intake process that provides the answers you need about prospective clients.
It helps you establish better intake habits, record accurate intake and create seamless client service experience for your law firm.
Follow up with leads at the right time
Failing to follow through with prospects after an initial meeting is like forgetting to text someone after a great first date—it doesn’t bode well for your future relationship (or lack thereof).
It’s important to follow-up prospects promptly so you can gather necessary information. Make sure prospects feel comfortable, and to enable you (and them) to make an informed decision on whether you’re a good fit for each other.
With CloudLex you can equip the intake team with the right intake tools and features to succeed (and that definitely shouldn’t be some antiquated legal matter management system).
Take advantage of a cloud-based intake solution that helps you delegate intake tasks to your team, automatically remind you to follow up with prospects, share calendar events, take notes and keep everyone on the same page.
It can result in higher conversions from intake to case, stronger intake pipeline and streamlined processes that makes your team more productive and efficient.
Automate client intake tasks
Similar to the butterfly effect, every step of a PI case (e.g. lead, intake, accepted case) sets off a series of mini-steps (e.g. events, tasks) that need to be taken care of. Every time you receive a lead, you have to first screen the lead’s details, qualify the lead and decide whether to accept or reject the case.
For example, while qualifying the lead in car accident enquiry someone needs to run conflict check, request DMV records and searches, organize a client meeting, etc.. All these steps are repetitive every time you receive an automobile accident.
With CloudLex’s intake system you can create workflow automation and assign all intake-related tasks at once and delegate them to specific people for timely execution.
Once assigned, your colleagues and staff will get reminders whenever they log in to CloudLex. And follow-up emails as an added protection against missed deadlines…you can even track task status on your dashboard.
When you apply this winning formula to every lead with CloudLex, you can convert leads into cases faster than your competitors.
Seamless intake to case conversion
You understand the importance of collaboration between team members, so why is it ok for your different software solutions to be out of sync?
You shouldn’t be using one case management solution, a different intake software, a separate calendar program, etc.. Because this leads to scattered information, prospects falling through the cracks, and lots of duplicative work, time-consuming data entry for you and your colleagues.
CloudLex is a unified personal injury case management software that takes care of all your personal injury needs. It integrates with your favorite outside programs, and automatically updates case/intake information in all the right places.
You can collect and manage plaintiff information, documents, contacts, and events related to the intake in one place. Once the intake is accepted, you can convert it into a case and transfer all its data into Cloudlex’s core case management application with a click of a button.
As a result, you can get rid of duplicative work and repetitive data entry from one system to another in your intake conversion process, and be more informed when you’re interacting with prospects.
Get action oriented insights into your legal practice
Do you know what your intake pipeline looks like? How many intakes your team has been working on? What is the conversion rate? Which marketing source generated rejected vs accepted intakes?
Without technology, it is almost impossible to get such insights in real-time and once you do, you can determine the changes you need to make to ensure you build, manage and grow your PI practice.
CloudLex gives you insights into accepted vs. new leads, and the number of intakes your law firm has accepted by categories such as personal injury, med mal, car accident, class action, wrongful death, etc.. It also shows you the valuation of all accepted intakes.
Moreover, You can generate reports of all tasks, NOC, statute, intake valuation, and state & venue reports to understand your intakes better.
CloudLex gives you deep insights and analytics in a dashboard fashion, which is easy to comprehend and utilize to optimize your client intake efforts.
Bonus: Track your marketing campaigns and return on investment (ROI)
Intake is not just about converting clients who walk-in. It starts with Marketing. You invest a lot of time, money and energy in marketing. This is a crucial element for the success of your practice since it gets you new clients.
But If you don’t have a process to track your spending and identify which mediums and messages work best then you wouldn’t be using your marketing budget, time and effort to its maximum potential.
With CloudLex, personal injury law firms are able to make decisions like which marketing channel to invest and not to invest in. Which marketing campaign is working for you so that we can focus on creating a similar campaign for your audience. That means higher return on investment (ROI) on every $ you spend on marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is intake management software?
Legal intake management software is a program that helps you record legal intake using forms and questionnaires. It enables law firms to manage client information, automate tasks using workflows, manage legal documents, contacts and events related to the intake.
How to buy client intake management software?
Law firms should choose client intake management software built specifically for their area of practice. Many personal injury law firms use CloudLex which is a unified all-in-one platform built exclusively for personal injury lawyers. To subscribe Request A Demo
How much does client intake software cost?
A cloud based case management software starts from $90/user/month. Intake management software is popular as a value added service. We recommend talking to our Cloud Consultant to learn more about intake management software and how it could transform how you run your firm.
How can intake software increase my profits?
With Intake Manager you get insight into which of your marketing efforts are leading to tangible results (and which are not). In addition to built-in expense tracking, Intake Manager provides your PI firm with detailed reports on which marketing campaigns are bringing in the most leads, conversions, and ROI—so you can operate from a fully informed position, spend your marketing budget wisely, and go back for multiple servings of profits.
What is unified legal technology?
A unified platform that seamlessly integrates all the apps you need, such as; Intake Manager, Matter Manager, Client messenger, Digital Archiver, Referral Engine, and Microsoft Office Online® in one place. So you can manage every stage in the case journey right from intake, to client service, to closure in one platform.
