The role of a personal injury attorney is forever evolving—but one thing remains the same: clients are the lifeblood of any successful PI firm…without clients, casebooks remain on shelves and financial books remain in the red.
That’s because the practice of law is a service—i.e., your livelihood is premised upon making your clients feel better. Lucky for you, satisfying your clients’ needs has never been easier and we’re here to show you how. Below we detail what clients expect in a modern PI lawyer and how your firm can use today’s next-gen legal technology to successfully achieve those goals.
How would your clients like to be treated?
1) With sympathy…
Personal injury clients are different than other clients—it’s evident in the name…personal + injury. They come to you with extremely personal causes of action that are close to their heart and a wide-array of injuries (both physical and mental) that can often affect them for the rest of their lives.
As a result, they want an attorney that views them as a person and not a paycheck; someone that’s aware of their fragile state before they even step foot in your door; a person that will make things easy for them from the very start and bring them relief, not additional burden.
2) With honesty…
Bearing that last point in mind, personal injury clients have been through enough—they don’t want to be setup for more disappointment. That’s why it’s important to accurately manage clients’ expectations—be realistic with their chances of success, inform them of impending events and their potential consequences, prepare them for upcoming costs and obligations, and set up a realistic communication plan—so they’re not shocked when things don’t go as hoped.
After all, a disappointed client is a talkative client (i.e., negative comments on social media, rating sites, to friends), which could lead to irreversible effects on your firm’s reputation, goodwill, and bottom line.
3) As your top priority…
We’ve already mentioned that clients are the lifeblood of your firm…and they should be treated as such. Every decision should be made with your client’s best interests in mind and that needs to be echoed in your messaging—from your website to your social media, it should be clear that your clients come first.
But you can’t stop there because we all know actions speak louder than words—you need to be able to promptly respond to your clients, proactively meet their needs, treat them with the respect they deserve, and represent them with everything you’ve got.
With plenty of competition out there, your firm needs to stand out. The best way to do so is to provide the very best in personal injury client service. Here are our top 3 tips to make potential clients feel comfortable with your firm:
Keep things simple
Make sure your firm’s intake process takes personal injury client service into account. Take a sympathetic approach, whilst remaining efficient and professional. Your client doesn’t want to have to repeat a distressing story because you didn’t record all the information correctly the first time.
Keep them in the loop
So a client has signed up with you. What now? You know your office is a hive of activity. But, if you don’t tell clients, they don’t know! Sending quick updates regularly to clients makes them feel included, and this is a keystone to good personal injury client service.
Keep their sensitive information safe
Your client will trust you with a range of personal and medical information to you. You must keep this information safe. Having secure storage, whether digital or physical – and control of who has access to this- is essential. One slip up here would be disastrous.
CloudLex is designed to make these tasks easy!
- Our software helps you create a smooth intake process so every client gets the same efficient, professional service, and your staff has a simple workflow to follow, giving them time to focus on personal injury client service.
- CloudLex is designed to allow you to send text updates to clients right from within the software. This makes it easy to provide frequent information updates to clients.
- CloudLex is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud: a billion-dollar industry leader protecting your clients’ data. For your protection Microsoft’s data-centers are HIPAA/HITECH certified, ISO certified, and have received numerous other industry-specific security certifications.
To make your firm’s personal injury client service top-notch, sign-up for a free demo of CloudLex today.
