TRP 321: [Legal] Intake Efficiency – How Law Firms Can Convert More Leads into Clients with Bernie Clark

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high stakes headhunter, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast. Thanks for joining me today. This episode is part of our legal specific series, especially if you're in a kind of law firm where you're selling to consumers, this show is definitely going to give value to you.

[00:00:38] Our topic title is Intake Efficiency, How Law Firms Can Convert More Leads into Clients. And our special guest is Bernie Clark. Bernie owns a company called Majux, that's M-A-J-U-X. And he spent a decade in marketing leadership positions for large and medium sized law firms before he started his company. His insights are going to give you value, I promise you. And you can reach out to him directly by going to our show notes wherever you listed this podcast.

[00:01:08] This podcast is sponsored by SharePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity. The show is also sponsored by The Rainmaking Magazine. Don't lose business to the competition. Read this publication and keep business development top of mind. Visit therainmakingmagazine.com today to chart your course to greater rainmaking success. I hope you get some valuable ideas from my interview with Bernie Clark today. Thanks for listening.

[00:01:39] Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast. Thanks for joining me. Our guest today is Bernie Clark. And today we're talking about intake efficiency, how law firms can convert more leads into clients. Bernie, thanks for joining me on the show. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, so let's get some working definitions in place. When you talk about a lead, what exactly does that mean? And what have you seen the avenues that law firms get those leads? And then we'll talk about how we convert those into clients.

[00:02:10] Yeah, sure. So a lead is pretty straightforward. Obviously, it would be anyone looking to, you know, hire the firm for their services. Typically, these days, more and more of them are coming in via text or, you know, chat widget. There's a million of those, and we can get into that. But ideally, a call, right? I mean, that's really what you're trying to get is someone on the phone.

[00:02:34] And then just what happens after this person looking to hire you or one of your attorneys gets on the phone. Essentially, it's kind of an intake process. Got it. So let's talk about your experience. Let's start with what firms get wrong in how they manage these leads. Let's kind of start with that. What are some of the major areas that you think law firms go wrong in terms of how to manage these leads? There's a lot.

[00:03:00] So number one would be not thinking about this or considering kind of intake process. So many firms across the country just, you know, pipe in calls from their different channels straight into a receptionist or a paralegal or a secretary that's just sitting there and never check up on it, never think about it. You know, many, you'd be very surprised, don't even ask where these clients or potential clients came from.

[00:03:30] So, you know, kind of starting at the beginning of it, I would say, is not even thinking about intake process. Right. You know, then beyond that, I would say not having somebody in charge who's kind of has some level of kind of specialized training, you know, not putting someone at the firm in charge of intake.

[00:03:54] Right. You know, relying on somebody that's doing a million other things, you know, has never had any kind of training in terms of kind of how to qualify the calls. I mean, I can't tell you how many clients, you know, that we have that start with us. You know, month one, we'll start kind of listening to calls or tracking down leads and asking clients, you know, what happened to this one, this one.

[00:04:18] And, you know, people will call and some person that answers the phone will just say, oh, we don't do that. Right. It's very often something that they completely do, you know, is a priority or even, you know, something that could be referred out.

[00:04:33] Right. And just kind of managing that that kind of relationship and so many practice practice areas, you know, with lifetime value of kind of client, if it's corporate work, if it's, you know, you're an immigration firm or a family law firm and then they might have other work. It could kind of become their point of contact or whatever. Referring work out and getting referrals back is its own biz dev strategy. Right.

[00:04:58] So that's right. Not trying just dismissing folks that call you that are a little bit outside of your practice area or within your practice area and the person doesn't know it is kind of crazy to me. I want to kind of go into this process a little bit deeper here. But one thing you mentioned, you said they don't ask where the leads came from. Why do you think that's important? Well, ideally, you would have somebody like us setting up the tracking and know where these leads are coming from. Right.

[00:05:25] But in the absence of that, if you're just kind of a solo practice and, you know, you have one paralegal wearing many hats as kind of intake, doing intake, secretarial work, things like that, kind of the face of the firm. You at a bare minimum, you should be asking how they heard about you. Right. So, you know, if it's a referral, the person gets credit. If it's a past client, you can send them a thank you or check in or something like that.

[00:05:54] If it's past client, you know, so many people call and they say, oh, you know, I used you for something 10 years ago. I'm on my next divorce or something. You know, they don't even know until they do kind of the conflicts check. Right. Yeah. So you mentioned having somebody in this role that you can train up and I know you work a lot with personal injury firms who ideally is suited for this role.

[00:06:18] And what should the founder of the firm or the managing partner, what should he or she train this person to really be good at and managing these leads? So ideally, if the firm can support it, you should have someone whose full time job is intake and, you know, client or matter opening and then following up, you know, once you send out a retainer agreement or the new client, you know, docs or PDF or whatever.

[00:06:46] Answering texts if they come in and things like that, manning the chat window, just leaving it up kind of on their screen, you know, the whole day or whatever. And putting someone in charge both silos or insulates them so that they're not distracted with a million other things. There's a filing you have to get out. You know, they're busy on that. They don't answer the phone. They go out to lunch, whatever. The backup kind of call system kicks in. And it allows for specialized training, right, because technology is constantly evolving.

[00:07:16] How people want to convert for different practice areas in different markets keeps changing and evolving. And it holds them accountable, right? So just walling somebody off to have that their full time kind of job is ideal, I would say. And then, you know, if you have after hours answering services or whatever, staying on top of them, making sure they're doing a good job, that nothing's falling through the cracks, just an individual set of eyeballs on it. Right.

[00:07:45] And you mentioned also a pitfall was them not qualifying those leads. What does that mean and why is that important? So that can go in two directions. And this might be, you know, kind of obvious to some folks, maybe not obvious to others. But, you know, whatever your practice area is, you have a sweet spot of the type of client you're looking for. Right. And every practice is different. Some practices cherry pick certain kinds of cases, refer everything else out.

[00:08:15] They have thresholds. They have to feed different, you know, associates or practice groups or whatever and kind of filter that down through. So whatever kind of the type of matter that you're looking to get in would be kind of first, obviously. So you would say, you know, did this accident occur in the last two years? Did you get a police report? Did, you know, you talk to the insurance adjuster? How did that go?

[00:08:43] So if there was kind of a medical care plan, did you stay on top of it? Did you follow that? You know, all those things. Just write a script, essentially. Right. And kind of put those those callers through that. And then on the other side, I mean, the absence of that can create kind of a gluttony of time wasting where you have to do that, you know, once the attorney gets on the phone. And that just eats up a ton of time, waste time, essentially.

[00:09:12] Or on the other side, it just you can be kind of too strict. You know, they might say, how long ago did this this accident occur? If it was six months ago and they didn't, you know, follow up with their with their medical care, they did the wrong kind of medical care or they did something wrong procedurally on their own. And that might be a case you can build up. Right.

[00:09:34] But, you know, the person, if they're not trained and not kind of in lockstep with the practice might incorrectly kind of dismiss that person and say, oh, we don't we don't handle that. Or this isn't the type of case we would take on. Those are all good ideas. Let me ask you then, is there any data that the firm founder or managing partner should look at in terms of their numbers, like ring and hold times, things like that, in terms of the actual inbound inquiries?

[00:10:02] What should they look for in terms of measuring data and why would that be important? All of that matters. So, you know, there's kind of waterfall drop offs that we evaluate for clients because we are the second pair of eyeballs and a lot of kind of. What does that mean, a waterfall drop off? Yes. I'll explain that. So typically there's a raw number of people that come into any channel. Right.

[00:10:26] Whether it's web, social, you know, if you're doing radio, TV, you're using ideally different phone numbers or different landing pages for all of this. You can kind of measure the activity on the spend for that. Right. And there's a drop off between just raw visitors, waterfall to raw leads, waterfall signed cases. Right. And having your finger on the pulse of both that percentage drop off.

[00:10:54] And there's industry standards that you're kind of looking to be within, at least out of the gate. And then beyond that, just the measurement allows you to get kind of a cost per raw lead by channel or even overall. Just kind of knowing what your marketing or biz dev dollars are generating in terms of raw lead. And then the cost per signed case, you know, ideally would be ultimately what you're trying to measure. Right. So that would have been my next.

[00:11:24] I was getting there, I guess. We're kind of jumping around. But, you know, measuring just getting it set up. The data points and the web hooks and the, you know, phone numbers that you're using by channel. Just set up to track is something that we do on day one for clients. Right.

[00:11:40] So even if you don't yet have the capability or the capacity to have someone who's kind of inside the firm in charge of keeping an eye on all this, you know, hiring an agency like us who can do this for you and kind of report in a retroactive sense. You know, just setting up the data is day one stuff, just the tracking kind of knowing. Yeah.

[00:12:09] And that probably helps with you making strategic decisions in terms of where you invest more resources to get clients by looking at what's actually worked out over time. Right. Oh, 100 percent. And it changes all the time. Right. I mean, you know, case in point, I'll just give you kind of some ballpark figures.

[00:12:26] You know, typically for paid social, let's say, and this is a conversation that I fairly often people call us and they'll say, oh, I sat at a seminar and, you know, we need to be on TikTok, let's say, or something. Right.

[00:12:40] You can do paid social, but because of the kind of misalignment of intent, I would generally call it, and targeting, the ability to target for warm intent, you're typically spending anywhere in the neighborhood of two to five times the amount per signed case than you would just kind of on, let's call it general, you know, Google ads targeting. Right.

[00:13:06] So, I mean, just knowing that and then, you know, even getting deeper kind of if you can attach a quality score or, you know, kind of overall have a kind of sense of, you know, not all channels for leads are created equal. So, you know, you might be getting really good action from a highly targeted kind of Google ads campaign. The quality of case is higher. You're not just looking at the raw kind of cost per lead, cost per sign case.

[00:13:34] And, you know, from TikTok, it's typically not. It's more kind of name recognition stuff. And then you can kind of even take it one step further and say, okay, if we're treating, you know, this particular channel more as kind of raw advertising or name recognition type of stuff, then we start evaluating it against other channels that are doing the same thing, whether it's billboards, sponsorships, whatever.

[00:13:59] And then you can kind of apples to apples compare it more so than, you know, if you're trying to compare just using an example, TikTok to, you know, your Google ads campaign. And then the inbound, the inbound categories, it could be a phone call. It could be an email. It could be a text. It could be a form that somebody fills out. It could be a chat bot, right? The online chat bot that you have. Are there any other vehicles that we get that, get those contacts from prospects? Yeah, I mean, new stuff's always coming out.

[00:14:28] There's ChatGBT keeps hinting that they're going to roll something out where you can kind of interact directly or have some sort of kind of mechanism to do that. You know, I haven't seen it yet. I would foresee a future where that's piped right into your phone or your dashboard in some capacity, particularly once they kind of advance the advertising platform that the AI platforms are rolling out.

[00:14:54] Now, ideally, they similar to kind of how LSAs function or something like that or text functions. A lot of firms using WhatsApp and kind of Spanish speaking communities and pipe a lot of different channels directly into your WhatsApp. It could change by the time this comes out, right? I mean, this thing, you know, these are kind of always evolving. But I mean, those are the main ones. Obviously, you're trying to tip people into the method of conversion that works best for your firm, right?

[00:15:22] So let's go all the way back. If you're not having somebody who's in charge of this stuff and assigned to this or that's part of their job function, you may not be getting back to people who fill out your form, you know, same day. You may not be calling them immediately, right? So in that case, you're just not even built to support form conversions, right?

[00:15:48] So, you know, typically if that's the case, you know, we have to tip people into calling. If that's going to give you the best chance of signing that client as quickly as possible on the same call, you know, preferably, that's what you have to tip it towards. That's great. So a little bit of it is kind of whatever the firm can support and does well for the firm. But then ideally, you should be able to get and convert leads from any challenge, the ones that exist, the ones that are coming out in the future, making sure all that's hooked up.

[00:16:18] Now, I know what you mean, why you say it's so important to think about this, because when you're thinking about that and you're deliberate and intentional, you're going to see ways that you can get better odds of converting that. Let me ask you this. What is a process tree and why would that be helpful in this process? Yeah, and that's the next step. You know, I would say after kind of making sure that you have your data points hooked up so you can at least start measuring, a process tree would be both kind of scripts

[00:16:44] and everything that happens in an organizational sense when someone calls, when someone fills out a form, when someone fills out a chat widget, right? So a good kind of easy to understand description of it might be something as simple as when they call, you know, splitting off the intake or the raw kind of call to say, you know, press one if you're calling, if your current client and calling about a matter,

[00:17:13] press two if you're calling about becoming a new client, right? And then you can point those calls, who answers those calls, everything differently, right? And then that allows you to siphon off your after hours answering, right? So if somebody is calling on an existing matter after hours, you might send them into kind of the general mailbox instead of kind of, you know, clogging up your intake with somebody who needs to speak to somebody after hours.

[00:17:41] If you're using an after hours, you know, call answering service or something like that. Are there any software considerations that firm managing partners should be mindful of in this process? Yeah, I mean, there's tons, right? I would say the first consideration is what case or file management system you're using and what that can support.

[00:18:00] You'd be very surprised or not surprised, I would say, to, you know, hear that every kind of case management system has its pros and cons, I would say. I don't, and it's crazy that we're sitting here in 2026 and, you know, I would say no case management software has really gotten it all the way right. And firms bounce around between them. It's a major undertaking to switch your case management, you know, software and systems. Yeah, right.

[00:18:28] But, you know, some can't support text. Some can't support automated emails that go out. You know, some can't support, you name it. If you wanted to kind of automate your, you know, new client opening forms, send them out as a PDF and have it go, you know, while you're on the call.

[00:18:46] You need to make sure that the lead data comes in, it pops up, you know, you can take notes, whoever's doing the intake, and then just send them a text, you know, that they opt into and then they get the PDFs if that's how they want to convert. A lot of people calling from different markets in the country. And it's also crazy, but I listen to so many calls where the person says, oh, I don't have an email address or something like that, right?

[00:19:14] Or I don't do email. So just the kind of multifunctionality of it, whatever supports kind of your client base in the market that you're in to be able to convert into a client on that same call and be tracked is what you should use. And then there's kind of all these bolt-on services, right, that are doing well. So CallRail is a big one. You know, we're a CallRail partner. CallRail is great.

[00:19:39] You know, it allows you to kind of create different phone numbers, create process trees, call routing, all that. You can track text right within it, create different phone numbers that kind of all point to the same place for different channels. And, you know, measure it all in one place. It's super functional in its web hooks and kind of widgets of what case management software is it can kind of layer on top and feed data into. You know, Intaker has been a great one. What's it called again? And Intaker?

[00:20:09] Intaker, yeah. Intaker made a big push last year. They're kind of, you've probably seen this on different websites. They have kind of a little AI kind of based chat widget that pops up. It usually has some sort of video loop or something like that or photo of one of the attorneys. And behind the scenes, it really is pretty customizable in terms of kind of the kind of questions or the intake screening kind of questions that it can ask.

[00:20:36] And then just allowing the visitor to convert, you know, prompting them to convert however you want it to convert. Right. So it pushes a call. Now they can do live connect, which is cool. And then after hours, you know, after hours answering services and kind of dedicated third-party answering services are always ebbing and flowing. New ones are popping up. I would advocate that every firm should have some after hours answering mechanism.

[00:21:04] In a 24-hour world, you know, if people are working all day and they don't get a chance to call an attorney or they call on the weekend or whatever, just because you're going home at 6 or 5 or whatever doesn't mean that people aren't trying to hire you at 7 or 8, middle of the night. So, yeah, I mean, just making sure, you know, that all of that is hooked up, that you test. That would be the next step from your kind of first question is that. Tell me about that. What does that mean, testing it? Yeah.

[00:21:29] So once you have the data hooked up and you kind of have it in a form where somebody's paying attention to it and then you have kind of the process kind of all set up, it's also important to test because things break. Like people call out sick, the after hours answering service that you signed up for maybe was supposed to be routing one phone number to Spanish speaking intake. And maybe that got hosed up somewhere along the line and you wouldn't know it unless you test it, right?

[00:21:59] So, you know, when we set things up for new clients, these systems and kind of the data hooks and things, obviously you test it when you set it up, right? But over time, you should essentially kind of secret shop yourself to a certain degree. Different times of the day, different call prompts, press one, press two, you know, whatever, and just test it. Make sure it's working the best it can.

[00:22:22] Ideally, you're recording these calls and you can kind of listen to the script if they're, you know, still abiding by the script that you've given them or the guidance that you've given them. I mean, just even if that phone gets answered quickly, right? I mean, I can't tell you how many times we'll have a client start with us and then, you know, we look at it after we have some data and we say, what's happening to calls between 12 and 2? And, oh, that's when Shirley takes her lunch every day.

[00:22:51] Well, what happens when Shirley's out? You know, what's the call rollover process? There is none. Okay. That's great, Bernie. I like how you bring that all together, finally closing with testing and improving it. And if we could summarize, as we bring our conversation to a close, three action steps for people that have this type of situation in their model, what would be three action steps you'd recommend for them to get started making changes in this regard?

[00:23:16] Yeah, I mean, I would say first, making sure that your data and measurement is set, right? That you're set up to at least have the data. You don't need somebody necessarily initially to kind of own, you know, measuring the data, but at least have it set up where the data is there, right?

[00:23:38] Then I would say, you know, second, ideally put someone in charge, even if it's a third party, an agency like ours or somebody, you know, internal. We train internal and work with internal staff members to kind of make sure all this is going well. Writing scripts, you know, all that kind of thing, making sure people are doing it, putting someone in charge of it, I think would be the next takeaway.

[00:24:02] And then third, I would say just kind of what we were talking about at the end, just making sure that you're always testing and improving your intake process, right? I mean, you could be converting 90% of these qualified leads into clients and it can always be 91%, right? And in the plaintiff's PI space, you know, particularly volume's great, but home runs are great too, right? You know, if you are converting at 90% and you say, oh, that's good enough, right?

[00:24:31] Or that's great, way better than most firms, right? And that would be true. The 1% that you're missing could be a catastrophic, you know, case that could, you know, make your year, you know, if you're missing that call. So just testing and improving constantly, staying on top of new integrations, new options, you know, things that come along. Yeah. And tell us about what your company does, what you have, what do you do that you'd like our listeners to know about, something that could help them bring. Yeah, sure.

[00:25:01] So, you know, this process that we've been talking about, kind of intake generally and measurement and improvement, is something that we offer as part of kind of our service when we start, right? So what we do for firms is what I would call kind of organic and paid lead generation, right?

[00:25:20] So we're just an outsourced third party, an agency that can, you know, handle building your website in a way that will convert better, writing content and creating a content strategy, you know, that will convert better. Setting up all, everything that we've talked about and measuring, and then just improving over time, right? Building the channels, whether it be organic, paid, whatever. And just putting that all together as kind of the one-stop shop. I mean, that's what most agencies do. That's great, Bernie.

[00:25:50] Well, thank you for being on the show. And for everybody listening, we're going to put all of Bernie's contact information on the show notes so you can connect with him directly. Thank you for sharing this wisdom with us today, Bernie. Yeah, yeah. And like I said, you know, call me if you're having issues with intake or you say, you know, we're kind of talking in generalities, right? But, you know, say, I don't even measure our intake or anything like that. You know, we certainly can help. It's not something that we do only for clients.

[00:26:16] We can certainly kind of do this in a project-based sense or at least get the data kind of set up for you. Call me, Ajax. We can help. That's great. Thank you, Bernie. Thanks so much for being here today. Yeah. Likewise. It's a pleasure. Thank you for listening to The Rainmaking Podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com.

[00:26:43] To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com.