Today’s legal sector is more competitive than ever, and this is especially true for personal injury law firms.
With so many legal practice management software options available to prospective clients, it’s critical to streamline your firm's client intake process to identify and retain the best leads.
A client’s first impression of your law firm occurs at the point of their initial call. How you and your team respond will set the tone for what the client can expect from future interactions.
Technology is helping small and evolving firms to manage their client intake process more effectively.
Technology is Necessary for Legal Client Intake
Is your law firm still relying on antiquated solutions to manage your client intake process? Whether you’re using paper, Excel spreadsheets, or Google Docs, chances are you're not tracking your law firm's lead as well as you should.
These patchwork solutions may have worked up until now, but as your law firm grows, they are poor tools for tracking follow-ups and identifying trends. Adopting a cloud-based legal case intake management software has several advantages.
What to Look For in Your Legal Case Intake Software
The best intake solutions should offer the following features and functionality, right out of the box:
- Access to your intake management in the office or on the go
- An intake workflow, highlighting leads that require follow-up
- Integrated reporting tools
- Ability to directly feed in leads from your website
In today's competitive landscape, law firms must harness new legal technology to set yourself apart. By choosing a legal case management software tailored to your law firm's needs, you can maximize the efficiency of your intake team.
Benefits of a Legal Case Intake Software
The most seamless solution would be intake management integrated into a case management system. No repetitive work for your team, and a streamlined customer service experience for your clients.
1. Organize Your Leads
Most good solutions for client intake allow you to organize and access client information all in one place. No more searching for a prospective client’s phone number. From critical case facts to statute dates, don’t let valuable information slip through the cracks.
An intake management solution will ensure all your leads are being properly recorded and saved. Best of all, this information will now be available from the office, or on the go. This organization means your whole team is on the same page, regardless of who spoke to the client first.
Clear expectations and workflow also facilitates training. That means more time to train new employees on customer service or sales skills.
2. More Accurate Data Entry
The best intake programs make it easy for your team to capture all the necessary information from a lead right from the intake screen. In some cases, it will be a name, call back number, and how they found your law firm. For others, it will be an in-depth evaluation of the case and a checklist of injuries.
The important thing is to make it easy for your intake team to capture each and every lead. Every rejected case holds valuable information about which of your marketing strategies are working. In law firms everywhere, this data is being lost because the barrier to entry is too great for a busy attorney.
Evaluate technology not only on its ease of use, but also for features that work to prevent human error. For example, some softwares will alert you about an incomplete telephone number or improperly formatted email address.
3. Optimize your Client Follow-Ups
Ever had a good prospective client sign with another attorney because your law firm failed to follow up with them? Technology designed to assist with client intake minimizes the chances of this happening.
A logical intake workflow identifies which leads are in limbo. Certain programs even allow you to filter by intake worker, or the date a lead was last touched. Technology can help every intake team become more proactive.
4. Harness Meaningful, Actionable Data
Do you know if client referrals or the internet brought in more leads last month? Do you know which of your intake workers has a better conversion rate? Or retention rate? If not, you are missing an important opportunity to process your data in a meaningful way.
Analyzing intake data helps law firms determine which marketing campaigns – or employees – are more successful. This information helps you make more empowered decisions about the future of your business.
Legal technology can help you transform your intake process. No more surprises and no more missed opportunities. Every lead that comes into your firm is the result of your hard work and money spent. Don’t let that lead – or the data – go to waste.
Learn More about CASEpeer's Client Intake Management
There are many new intake management solutions on the market. Do your research to determine which is right for your law firm. Learn more about CASEpeer's client intake management and check out this blog on converting leads through your intake strategy.
About CASEpeer
CASEpeer is a comprehensive case management solution for personal injury attorneys. We understand how important intake is to a legal business. That’s why we’ve integrated powerful intake management tools directly into our cloud-based software. Click here for more information of CASEpeer’s intake features.
