[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign, most firms survive. The best ones scale.
Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think bigger.
I'm Kevin. Daisy.
Let's jump in.
All right, Nick, worker. What's up, man? My friend. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Kevin. Daisy, let's go.
Good to see you, man.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Me and Nick have known each other for a little while, so we are recording. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
Excited to have Nick here. I like to leave with a question. Some help for folks out there. Nick is deep in intake.
We'll get into that in a second.
But, Nick, just how important is intake when you're talking to all the clients? You have what you see on a daily basis, but just share kind of like your passion for it and how important it is for law firm owners to take it serious.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: So it's really funny. I talk to a lot of people in my network about how much I love LinkedIn and intake right now, especially in, like, the legal marketing community is the hottest topic. It's the second hottest topic besides, like, AI mode overviews and like, geo, whatever acronym you want to call it.
How important is intake? You can have the best marketing. You can rank number one for all your keywords. You can get all the referrals from ChatGPT.
You can have the best referral network. You can even have the best setup CRM. But unless you have a fundamental understanding of intake and a process that matches the way that your internal workflows are, you can't convert any of your marketing leads, or whatever your terminology is, to actual paying clients. So intake is one of those things that it's like, I think we've rebranded sales for the legal community because we were like, oh, you should do sales. And every lawyer was like, no, sales are bad. And we were like, okay, let's call it intake. And now they're, like, kind of buying into it.
But like I mentioned to you before, we were recording a lot of what we do when we're speaking to lawyers who are. I'll call it bootstrapped, right? Like, new solo practitioners. And small law firms obviously have an interest in keeping costs low and making sure that they're giving the best possible experience to customers. A lot of them don't have any intake process or know what questions that they should be answering at the start of a call about a specific type of case. So that's where we come in. We do a little bit of consulting. We kind of get aligned with goals and help them understand the information that they're gonna need. And intake is. Is vitally Important if you wanna make.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Money a hundred percent. I mean, you know, I'm in the marketing space driving leads and it's worked into my sales process to talk about intake, figure out what that's like. And I, I don't even ask questions about marketing and stuff like that. It's really, I can see everything about where they're at, how they rank, how they show up, what's there, just based on what kind of marketing that we do here. But intake, if you got a form right now, how do you handle that? If you got a phone call right now, how does that handle if you had a chat come through or a LSA lead that you're going to pay for, or a click from Google Ads onto a landing page, you know, how has this all been pro, you know, handled? And so that's important to know because I can sign a client.
They've been to five agencies, they want leads, we get them leads, problem persists, they're not happy. And so, you know, it's really important for us to understand is the client invested in that and have they got a system in place already or like you said, bootstrap. I got a lot, we have a lot of smaller clients that do reach out to us, that we do work with, that are solo and they're, you know, I'll get these things like this, Kevin, I don't want any clients calling me that don't do blah blah, blah or don't have this or that. And it's just like, you know, they're already coming in hot, like they feel frustrated that they have to take a call. That client's not just perfect case for them.
And it's like, you know, they're probably not doing very well at converting those calls that do come in.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: So we have the same problem. It's like you're, you want to get phone answering help, right? And people will be like, well what happens if like the case is no good or it's not in my practice area or it's this? And I'm like, well you should have a process to like refer that case out or pre qualify it. Or maybe you, you know somebody who handles that type of specific case and you refer that out. Nothing is going to be, I think, a perfect one to one fit every single time. I think that's the nature of the law. But yeah, I think getting overly concerned about what you don't want is a negative outlook. And your intention should be to focus on what you do want and how to address everything that comes in, you know, What I mean, like, have a plan. This is kind of what we're talking about. And this is what intake is about in general, is having a plan and having a process in place.
So it's like, what happens to your point? Right? What happens if this type of call comes in and it's not the perfect case for me? Do I have specific criteria where I'll take it anyway? Do I have specific, specific criteria for. I tell them politely, like, it's not a good fit for us and you should contact X, Y and Z. Or do I have, like, I, I only do family law and somebody called me for a criminal thing because they got a referral from a family member. And then I have a referral network that I send criminal cases to because I know somebody. It's like, if you don't have that plan, you don't know what you're gonna do. And then you ignore the person and they leave you a one star review and you're baffled.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And people do leave bad reviews and not even hire the firm. And your lawyer's like, but they didn't even hire. We didn't even work with this, you know, person. And so you're tell Google that and you know, good luck getting a hold of anybody there. So even though it may come off eventually, it may stay for forever. So how they, how you. They interacted with your business? Right.
And so that's exactly right.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: That's the definition that Google states as what qualifies for a valid review. It's any interaction with your business.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah, no. A hundred percent. So, yeah, having a plan for this stuff and having the right things in place and technology tools, you know, things have changed so much, man. It's. I've said this a lot on the podcast. It's the exact same words people are used to Uber and Domino's and all this instantaneous gratification and notifications and where's my information? What's going on? And it's just so rapid, it is so fast that they get a different experience when they call a law firm or an agency or whatever. And so we got to get on board with what the normal consumer out there is expecting. So. And they're also probably in a bad situation. They're calling a lawyer probably the first time.
So, you know, it's.
They're. Whatever situation they're in is probably not a good one unless they're, you know, calling an estate planning firm or they're trying to do something that's more of a future thing. So, yeah, empathy on the Phone, how you handle the call, they're in a bad spot. So, you know, there's a lot of other things that you got to think about, like what's the process, the call scripts, you know, all those things have to be figured out. So it's huge. And then I think some of the top firms that I've had on this show, like, they, they're constantly looking their metrics and like tightening them down and, and response times and you know, they have lots of data and dashboards because they're bigger, they scale.
But listen to them too. Like, you know, if you, this podcast or other podcasts or any of these folks that are out there talking about this stuff, you can learn a lot from what they're doing because they do have the scale to start to look at just the small tweaks that, that make a big difference.
And the small, you know, that's my.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Favorite thing to look into is like at heart, I'm a marketer, right? Like I'm, I run all the marketing here and I don't subscribe to like first click attribution, last click multitouch because it's like not representative of a customer journey, right. And there's multiple offline marketing efforts that you can have out there, especially when you're a lawyer, right. Like, billboards are really pop.
But I do like and encourage using data as it pertains to your internal processes. Right? So like say part of your intake, you have a three step intake process. A lead comes in, you answer the phone call, or it's like a direct response type of thing. You get a, you get a form filler, you get a chat before the phone call can be made. Like say it happens after hours. You have an automated email that goes out, you have an automated SMS text that goes out and an option for the person to book a calendar that's like the three step process that goes out. You need to know how effective each of those things are.
What's the percentage rate of people who respond to the email versus engage with the SMS text? Right. Like 65% of people are texting you back and 35% of people are emailing you back.
Got a better shot at text messaging if every time you get a client to schedule an appointment on your calendly or whatever calendar integration you're using, they have an 80% chance of actually showing up for the meeting as opposed to a 30% chance if you just try and call them back. Then like these are the things that you build into your intake process.
Sure. You can look at like click through rate and where traffic is coming from and invest more in those channels to be more visible for how people are actually searching for you. On the demand side, I just, I'm one of those people who's very data skeptical as it pertains to like specific channel marketing. And I really love when people get granular about like call tracking to make sure that what's their answer rate, what's the response rate, what time of day are people calling the most so that you can like put things out there in order to capture them. And one of my favorite things to do, and I do this internally here, and it informs a lot of what I put out there for marketing is I listen to the actual sales calls. So like if you have a law firm and even if you're solo, get a call tracking software and listen to your sales calls, even if you're the one doing them, it just helps you so much. Like you can throw it into ChatGPT too and get insights. And there's programs like Gong out there. They were the first to do this, but they give you specific insights on where like the conversation drops off. And maybe you don't say this thing in this way, or maybe you cover pricing in a different way and it informs your intake process. And you can make changes on how you talk to people and whether or not you try to match their tone or joke around or you know, like.
Yep, there's strategy behind everything. And you can inform like you're going to be your own person at the end of the day. Every conversation is going to go differently, no matter how much of a script you have or questions that you need to ask.
But listening to your phone calls will give you the contextual human insight onto what's actually working.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, huge. Yeah. We just started using a system called Evoma, which is, records the calls, like video call, kind of like this. And I got trigger words too. So we built out like a template. And so if I'm like, hey, Nick, tell me about your, your law firm. Like, give me an overview of your law firm. Well, the word overview is a trigger. And then it'll organize everything that they talk about the firm, how many attorneys, the revenue, all that will be all in my notes, all sectioned. But then you can also look at. Yeah. How long you talked, how long they talked, the tones, the things that you missed. Well, I didn't, I didn't ask them about their intake. Completely forgot. So on the next meeting that I have with them, I need to make sure that I cover that because to your point, we're human and we're going to kind of go and follow things along. So super helpful to look at how you're interacting with these, with your potential client and where you need to improve.
Yeah, there's so much out there.
Well, Nick, I wanted to. I don't know if we even mentioned Nick's with Answering Legal and most people probably know of your podcast and who you are, but they also have some exciting stuff. We can talk about intake all day and we're going to continue to kind of talk about it. But Answering Legal has been coming out with some new products and wanted to kind of get Nick on here to talk about what they're up to, what they're doing. They're obviously known for taking care of your phones 247 and Nick, I guess tell us a little bit of background about yourself and Answering Legal and then we'll kind of dive into what you guys are up to.
Today's episode is brought to you by Answering Legal. Now. I just switched my company array digital over to Answering Legal and it's made my life a whole lot easier. If I can't get to the phone, their 247 virtual receptionist take the call and take them through a full intake process so we never miss new business again. Now, Answering Legal has been at this for more than a decade and they specialize in answering phone calls for law firms like yours. They even have a brand new, easy to use Apple and they integrate with all the top legal softwares and platforms. So from our listeners today, we actually have a special deal of a 400 minute free trial offer of Answering Legal services that you can try out by going to answeringlegal.com array. You can also call 631-437-4803 and use special code Daisy. That's my last name.
D A I S E Y.
So go check them out and let's get back to the show.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. Thanks for the, the softball there. I was actually playing slow pitch last night and you just like threw me a lob. I'm not that good. I don't hit home runs but like hit some line drives.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: And I jog around the bases and that's my exercise.
Yeah, I've been with Answering Legal a long time. We originally started out and it wasn't a crowded space, you know, like answering phones. There was like call Ruby did a really good job.
But largely we were the only answering service that really dedicated ourselves to answering for lawyers. And we just like there was such A demand for it that we just started building our systems to be able to handle intake and routing and like the way that we answer the phones and training our receptionists to like understand what people are talking about when they call in. Because here's the weird thing, right, is buyers over time in a market market get more educated on how they're going to buy things. And so people will call in and say like, oh, like I have an mva.
And the receptionist like would balk and be like, what's an MVA? Or like I have a chapter 13. And it's like, what's a chapter 13?
Divorce is a little easier. Like I'm pretty sure divorce is a, is a more common thing. But over the years, like you have to evolve, right? The market is always changing and so we've had to upgrade our technology.
So we do, we do a lot of things now. Like over the past couple of years we've developed direct integrations with all sorts of legal CRMs and non legal CRMs that people are using and zapier and all that stuff. Because to lawyers credit, like I've been, I've been in this game a long time. I'm, I'm working here 11 years and I remember like Lexicata. I don't know if anybody knows what Lexicata is, but it's now Clio grow and nobody was integrated. Like you just got your messages from the service, nobody was really using a CRM. They got paper and filing cabinets and receptionists and all that. So what we came out with now is like AI is huge and we have a really great, I was gonna say sick. We have a really great software engineer team I guess is what you would call them. And they had the idea to build an intake chatbot for lawyers websites and there's a few out there that I think do a really good job, but they're really fundamentally run by AI.
So what we did was built. So there's somehow. I'm not a software engineer, but I do have a fundamental understanding of how it works. So this thing is laid over OpenAI, which is the model for ChatGPT. Right now it's on GPT 4.1 Mini. I know for sure. I think that's the best conversational one. Again, I'm not the best AI forefront expert in the world, I'm just a marketing guy. But so here's what we did, right, is we put that in the chatbot and then developed a way to steer a conversation and also lead with empathy and match the chatter's Tone. So essentially what it does. And, like, we have a cool bunch of demos for this. I think I sent it to you.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw the demo. It was really awesome. Yeah.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: So I was on a call yesterday with Jordan Ostroff from the Laid Back Life, and. And what's the name? Carpe Diem Consulting. Such a great guy.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, Jordan's awesome.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: He's got a big personality. So I was like, just play with the chatbot. Do it. Like, I just threw him to the wolves, right? And he's writing all this stuff. And the bot that we built for this test website is largely for criminal defense and personal injury because you have to customize it, you have to tell it information. So, like, say you wanted to use the chatbot. Kevin. I could feed the chatbot a bunch of information about Array Digital, your services, who to contact about what, your phone number, your business hours, your address, all the stuff that it could possibly know about your business. It's kind of like. Like a custom GPT in that way.
And then it'll flow the conversation and continue to ask questions in a specific cadence and, like, steer the conversation back. So say you try to.
You're like, hey, I need SEO, PPC, LSAs, all this stuff, right? It'll say like, great. Like, we're so happy to hear that. And we offer the following things in terms of that.
What's your first name? And the person says, like, well, where are you located? I'm here. And it'll be like, I'm in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. I'm pretty sure that's where you are. And may I have your first name? You know, it'll keep trying to steer it back to get the information, but what Jordan did was he threw a complete curveball because in the script, it said it would do an estate plan. And I was kind of nervous. I was like, oh, I don't know if this thing is, like, built to answer estate planning questions. So he starts asking questions and throwing it, like, Jordan, but my friends call me Jordan. And it was like, oh, okay, Jordan. Like, it didn't mess up his name and call him Jordan, but please call me Jor. And then he started asking it questions about an estate plan. And it was like, oh, like, I understand you move states, and that's like, you know, X, Y, and Z.
Can you upload the current version of your estate plan so that we can see it, get an overview? And then when you come in, we know, like, what the assets are on the estate plan and why you need to change it and how we can Help you change it, which state you came from, which state you're going to.
And Jordan's a lot of fun. So like he had me laughing the whole time. It gave me a lot of confidence too because like, I've done my own internal testing, but you don't know how users are going to use it right until you put it out there. So it's in beta right now and our customers are liking it. But a lot of what we're doing is like implementation and training it and you have to do one to one training. Again, it's like building a custom GPT. So we have to train the bot and then give it to the attorney and then they run their own testing and say like, oh, I want it to say this instead of that.
Or I'd like it to respond in this way instead of this way. Oh, I forgot. I have to add this specific thing about this type of case that I handle because of who knows what reason.
It's been really cool. The feedback so far has been really good and there's kind of to my luck and prosperity. No one out there who's really doing something like this. And again, it's free for anybody. You don't even have to be an answering legal customer.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: So if you're watching this, what's the deal with it? How do you get it? How much is it?
[00:20:03] Speaker B: It's bizarre because they came to me with this project, they're like, hey, this is how we developed it all that. Like I'm working with the product on the dev team and talking to the CEO and we're like, okay, like, how do we go to market with this? Right? Like, what's our pricing structure? He's like, just give it away for free. Okay, who do we give it away to for free? Like customers. Like, you have to become a customer in order to get it. Nope, just give it away to lawyers for free. We have this whole press release coming out about why we're giving it away for free. I won't get into that right now. There's, there's a specific reason and, and it's a good one. But to me it's really cool because it's like AI is really changing law firms. And instead of being like gatekeeping this process from law firms and saying, oh, pay me, we'll show you this, that the third just. Here you go. It's the, it's the best thing that we could offer possibly for free. We're not selling your data. There's no, I don't know, there's like Terms and conditions that say we're not, we're not selling your data, all that. How do you get it? So I'll send you a link. Kevin, that would be great.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: How's my lawyers listening? Get, get access to it and check it out or check the demos out or.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so if you just go to answer in legal.com, you'll find it under the product section. If you want to be really Fancy, it's answering legal.comaichatbot and you schedule a demo. We'll hop on a zoom call with you for like a half hour, tell you like what the capabilities are, get aligned with the goals of your firm and how your internal processes work so that we can kind of match it to that. And then we'll talk about the questions that you want to get answered. And then we'll set up custom endpoints to go to your CRM via direct integrations, set up a calendly integration and, and then upload. So we do like a questionnaire. So I would send you like say I was putting it on your site. I would send you this. It's basically like a Google form, right? We use a different form posting thing and you just answer questions about your business. So who gets this type of lead? What's the name of the business? Where are you located? What type of cases do you handle?
[00:21:56] Speaker A: What's your pricing form for a new client?
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Questionnaire.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: It's exactly that.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: I love how it has calendly integrated into the chat. So when you pop up the chat on the website, you talk to it, do all those things and when you're ready to schedule an appointment, it literally just loads right in there and you're just like, click, choose your time right there, done. It's like, that's pretty sweet.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I think that's like the user experience tactic too. And like, you know this, you're in marketing. One of my main goals when I, when I build a resource on the site like that is to make sure that it doesn't take you off of the site. I'll see lawyers websites sometimes, like you go to schedule a consultation and it opens a separate window in a non branded, non embedded calendly form.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And then what happens when they fill out that they're not on your site anymore and you want to keep them engaged? Like that's time on site. Who knows what the actual SEO metrics are for Google? They lie, they tell you one thing, they do another. I just can't imagine a world that it's not better to have Somebody on your site interacting with things than it is to bring them off of the site onto a non embedded calendly. So it was very cool for us to be able to get it in there.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: It's the point where you'll lose again. You'll lose people. Maybe, you know, if you're small and you're, you may not notice it but I bet the bigger firms, you know, with, with a lot of traffic can, can definitely say that's, that's losing cases. If we're a small firm, you lose one case because of it.
You know, it could be 5,000, it could be a hundred thousand dollars.
So you know, you pay to get their attention, you might as well keep them there. Yeah, yeah. I looked at a site just today actually and PI firm out of San Francisco area. They're getting good traffic, domain rating's good. They rank for everything. No leads are getting converted and you know, it's just looking at their stuff, it's like none of the buyer like journey information.
The things you would need to make a decision are on their, their private series pages. Nothing, you know, you can tell they're just made for SEO, but yet you drove someone to it and you're missing all the stuff that they need to make a decision. So they gotta go somewhere else, Google reviews or wherever and you're, you're making them dig for it. And so just small things like that that I see right now, people, their attention span is, is nothing. So if you get them there, you better do your best to convert them. And these, something like this chat phone number with call tracking, all that stuff, you gotta have it all.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: I love stuff like that. And I'll nerd out on this with you all day.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: And people, people have the wrong idea about how to capture leads on a website.
So a lot of sites that I'll go to will have really poor like navigation slash call to action slash call it a lead magnet, whatever you want to call it on a, on a page, right. And people are like how do I contact you? It's frustrating. I would leave and find somebody else too if, if I didn't have anything like that. People's responses to that used to be like pop ups like fil this pop. That's invasive. You know, people don't want that. It's spammy. You give them the opportunity and the choice, right? Then you're not forcing them to do anything. It's the same thing like we talk about intake. It's not pressure, it's opportunity. And what I personally like about Our particular chatbot is that I think we have the capability to do it, though we don't recommend that you do it is that it can pop up and prompt the user and say like, hey, I'm Kevin Daisy from Array Digital.
I love you. Will you love me back?
We could do that. We're not gonna do that. Right.
But it doesn't auto pop up and like interfere with somebody's journey on the website.
The best practice that I've found is like the law firm logo in the bottom. And then we can put like a little bubble that says like, hey, if you need any help, click me. Like Clippy, the word art guy from back in the day. If you're old enough to.
Do you remember when we all used Microsoft Word? I think lawyers actually still use Microsoft Word and there's like plugins and things for that.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Most are on Microsoft. I think I'm on Google.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: But I'm a Google Docs fanboy.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, no, I agree with you. There's.
I see all the chat bots. I know most of the people that are the owners are involved with the companies for the most part. Some are good, some are great. I hate the one that just pops up right in the middle as soon as you get on the site and it's like, do you have a case? Yes or no? It's like, you know, it happens to me every day. Cause I'm on law firm websites all day and I just. I would hate that if I was getting ready to start reading something on a page and it's like, do you have a case or not? It's like literally like, if you hit no, it's like, what is it? Like send you off somewhere else. Like, you know, it's like, like, aren't.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: You supposed to tell me whether I have a case or not?
[00:26:47] Speaker A: I'm like, I'm trying to figure this shit out. That's why I'm here.
So I just don't like that.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: I have a friend who's wrapped up right now in a whole lead gen thing. I don't even know what you would call that.
What's the word where you buy cases from a third party and he's consulting with them and I'm like, I don't know, man. That's an ethical gray area for me.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: That's like unbranded. It's like unbranded Legion. So I had a firm.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: That's exactly what it is.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yeah. We just signed a firm that's been doing that for about three years.
Completely Destroyed their brand, their SEO, their ownership of their own lead sources destroyed by doing legion for like three years straight, like 170 grand a month to like you know, and unbranded. So then, you know, the firm's not mentioned. There's no trust built, there's no brand.
And then they're low level leads that lead that. Their case values have decreased and decreased and decreased. So now they're just, it's like they're churning. They had to hire like seven people for intake because of the volume of crap that comes through that's not even quality.
So overhead goes stuff on LinkedIn all.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: The time with people. It's like to me, I'll say like this customer service is, is the number, is the name of the game for me. Like your brand is your customer service, it is your marketing, it is your intake, right. That makes up your brand. And it's also like people need to understand that part of your brand is what happens after the sale, right? It doesn't just end when somebody pays you. So I just can't imagine. And this is why it's such a problem and why this is why I love talking to people like you is what I'll say. Because there are so many bad actors in the legal space. There are a lot of good ones. I'm not saying everybody's bad, right? Like I can name 50 good ones off the top of my head.
There's a lot of really bad stuff out there and I know that it works. I know it works. I spend a lot of time on legal content and interacting with all that stuff. And I still got the ads of the AI generated people who say I'm going to make an AI generated version of you that speaks Spanish. And when the Spanish speaking customer shows up to the consultation and you don't speak Spanish because you're not an AI generated avatar that breaks down trust and destroys your brand. And people get. I think it comes from a lack of visibility to like people like yourself. You know, like you're doing a good thing with a marketing company, but you're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on ads where these lead gen websites that have been around spamming people and taking advantage of lawyers have been around forever and they just, there's no like in my opinion like white hat way to market that. They're not going to rank above but they can spend a ton of money to generate those leads and then they convince that that's a good business model and it's just lies, deceit, it's fud it's, that's why I love talking to like people like you. Other marketing agencies dedicated to legal that actually consult and find out where a law firm should be online and offline and get involved in their intake process. It's kind of why I love it here is we actually understand the goals of law firms and try to get aligned with them. Instead of being like if you don't do this you're going to lose all this money and you're gonna have to close up shop and go work. Like that's just not a way to operate.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I appreciate that being like. I think the one thing like for yeah. When I talk to any law firm that reaches out, it's like I still handle those conversations for the most part. And as we, I've had sales teams in the past and I've, you know, we're, we're trying to build that back up right now. But it's really wanting to understand the law firm, ask the, the hard questions and get a good sense of them so that we can make sure that we can help them and take care of them and that they're going to be able to do the right things to take care of the leads, answer the phone or whatever it is how they can handle that. And so having a good understanding of where they are as a business, in their business life cycle, if you will, are they very unsophisticated and they're hard headed and they're not going to listen or are they truly trying to take care of the client and they care and they want to do the right things to your point, their brand or I would say like even the culture of your firm, that is your marketing, that is everything, right?
So if you have a, a shitty culture because you're that kind of leader, that's just, you know, as a hard ass or whatever.
And when someone does pick up the phone or someone does answer a client, if that culture is not good and strong and like they want to be there, then that is your marketing, that's your brand. That's, that's how you're gonna be represented.
You can just go super deep on it I guess, but you gotta care about all those things and because it will catch up with you no matter what. It's easy to say, I think, you know, how do you make a good culture and how do I take care of this? How do I, you know, influence my brand?
[00:31:45] Speaker B: That's why I love, I really do love like putting out good content and talking with lawyers is that there's Still a misconception that if I'm a talented lawyer, I went to the best law school, I have experience in prosecution, I've got all these things that make me special. They could all be true. Doesn't really matter.
And a lot of, and I think this is pervasive of all businesses. A lot of people who go into business don't have this understanding that if you like, you use the word culture, I really like that if your entire culture from start to finish, in the way that you obtain, consult with and then ultimately do work for and report on and iterate for your customer, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how good your marketing is. Right. Like you can go online and post. We got all these number one rankings for this law firm.
Their PPC is down 8. The CAC is down 80%, the LTV is up 95%. We're crushing it.
But unless that's tied to real business metrics or servicing the client.
And we talked about this earlier, sure we could talk about phone analytics, we could talk about call analytics, but what's the actual survey your customer after they're done working with your firm or while they're working with your firm. What are you happy with right now? What are you not happy with? What, what can we improve upon? And then you take that information and you are open minded and not just saying like, oh, I went to Harvard, I'm a prosecutor, I've never lost a trial like that. Doesn't matter. If, if your customers aren't happy, they're not going to recommend you, which is a low cost acquisition for a case. They're not going to leave you a positive review. Ultimately you're not going to be able to change and keep up with someone who's going to enter your market and really understand those things. So I think it's incumbent upon us, people like me and you to teach lawyers that. And I think we've done largely a very good job over the last decade. I can only speak to the last decade because that's where I've been.
It's definitely gotten better. I still see like I attend a lot of webinars because I like to get educated and I network with people I like to support.
And I just like I see these lawyers who are just in these tough situations where like I don't know how to get cases.
My cases aren't converting to paying clients. We're spending all this money on marketing and I'm not happy with it. Cause I don't understand like they're showing Me, oh, my traffic is up. But like, that doesn't move the needle for my business. Oh, my form fills are up, but they're not helping me convert clients. I'm getting all these negative reviews and I don't understand why. It's like, it's incumbent upon us to point them in the right direction and be like, hey, this is the information that you need in order to make a decision. Here's how we empower you to get that right. Because ultimately they have to do it. But a lot of people, I think, do want to do it and they do want to get there and they just need a little bit of help. And there's nothing wrong with that.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's.
I see it all, all day because I, I get, I have a lot of solo firms that reach out and they're like, I need help and my business is down X percent. And I've worked with three marketing agencies and they're coming in kind of, you know, burned and, and confused and kind of in a tight spot, like you're, you were saying.
But everything they say is coming from a place of, you know, like everyone's out to get them and they got some bad reviews and, you know, the marketing doesn't work and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, and, and some of them, I don't know if they are interested or they're just too in the weeds that, you know, and they're bitter and they used to be good and they, they talk about, you know, their experience and they're the best in the town and everyone should be using them and you know, they're just in the wrong mindset, you know, and that's going to detract no matter what. If you get the lead or a call, phone, whatever, they're just in a bad place and they need to step back and go, okay, I'm the problem and I need to make some changes and I need to listen to others.
Surround yourself with other law firms that are successful and you know, you're going to hear some good stuff. And that's why I have like the mastermind that I started where we just talk about this kind of stuff and.
But the lawyer that has to come around to the, the realization that they need to do something different. Marketing company can't fix it, answering legal can't fix it.
At the end of the day, you have to make those changes and attract the right people and get good reviews, referrals, like those things will happen. Unfortunately, I do see a lot that I've talked to that are just not beyond help. But they're in a bad spot and they feel like they used to crush it and now they're not. And they don't know why, but it's pretty apparent why.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: The whole time you're talking, I'm thinking like, because I obviously I talk to people in a much different regard. They heard about us. They understand about an answering service as a solution. And they understand the differentiator between hiring an answering service that's like, completely outsourced and not trained and answering for everybody and long wait times. And they understand, like, the what I'll call, like, table stakes of why answering the phone is really important. And there's studies, right? Like, some people are super educated and they're like 65% of my leads come from phone calls and need to have a system to back that up Again. I think it's incumbent upon us to educate lawyers as business owners because they come in with these blue sky expectations.
And to me, it's funny because if I came in to a law office and said, like, well, I have this case, I really want it to be a million dollars. I looked it up and someone with my similar injury got 1.5 and can you take a cut on your commission until you prove value to me? And you know what I mean? Like, they would get frustrated because that customer is coming in with all these preconceived notions, right?
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Man, it happens to me a lot.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: And so they come in with like, blue sky. Right?
A lot of what I combat is like, what you're saying isn't wrong. It's not at all wrong.
But nothing in the world is going to make you 100% happy. There's no 100% perfect solution for everything. What you want to be looking for is someone who's willing to take accountability and fix problems as they come up. Because we're all human. If you want to use AI for everything in marketing, good luck. You still have to do all the input yourself. The other thing that I want to touch on is, and I, I'm guilty of this too, is I'm so idealistic that if it's not done the exact way that I believe it should be done, I'm one of those people that says, well, if you want it done right, you should do it yourself. And that's just not the smartest use of your time. Right? And let's talk about small law firms here, right? Because that's mainly mine and your audience. A small law firm should not until they reach a certain threshold of employees and culture and revenue and profitability. Like, look at your P and L and see where you're. You're ready to grow, right?
But you're not Ready to hire three receptionists that can cover three 8 hour periods of the day and answer all your phone calls. You're not ready to hire a six person in house marketing team because it's just not going to pay. You're not ready to hire a five person intake team as a solo practitioner. These are things that you can get help with.
And if you have a trusted partner who has your, your vested interest at heart or your best interest at heart. I screwed up that idiom, then, like, there's a trust factor there, right? Nothing that, like me and you as a vendor do is going to be perfect. If it was, we would be wildly. Like with Jeff Bezos at his wedding last week, you know, the thing.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Guarantee everything.
Do you.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: The thing that helps me sleep, seriously, is that, like, we own mistakes, we're transparent. It's not your fault. It's. Maybe it's our fault. Let's work together to fix it. Maybe we misunderstood. Maybe a mistake was made. Maybe this thing doesn't work for your business that's evolved anymore. And instead of playing the blame game, like, take accountability, address the problem, iterate. And I think that's the best thing that I see out there is accountability. And I think that's the problem that like, you face this problem all the time on a, on a, on a deeper scale, I think, because the investment for a marketing agency is much higher than the investment for like an answering service. But I have the same problem. People will come and they'll say, well, I had an answering service before and they overcharged me and it took too long to answer the call and the message in the call center went down and the support was never available. And like, they've been burned by some bad actors. I'm not gonna say, like I said before, not everybody's perfect. But like, it's that blue sky principle thing, right? Like, if you find a partner that's willing to take accountability and help you make the tough decisions and help you pivot, I think that's the most valuable thing in the world because that's like any employee that you're gonna have. You know, if I brought you in here, I would. I think you're gonna do a great job, Kev. I really do. I think you're gonna be 95% correct, but I also, like, think you're gonna be 5% incorrect.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: All right, sweet. I'm out. Let's Go, let's do it.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: I would love to work with you, man.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: No, 100%, man. I mean, that's. I tell lawyers this all the time and try to. Transparency is one of our core values here, and we try to live by that. We do lessons learned. If we screw up something or we think we did or we didn't, but the client thinks we did, we do a whole lessons learned and we have a meeting with them, with all the people and say, here's. Here's what we think happened, here's dates, here's times, there's whatever in the sales process. I'm like, I get this a lot, Kevin. Just, just like your story. I used to do this or I've seen this or a lawyer told me this and I want this outcome. This is my budget that I have, blah, blah, blah. And this is what I'm expecting. This many leads by this amount of time.
Can you guarantee that? Right.
So they're coming with all this information. And you know, one of the things, for one, I can't guarantee him anything.
We don't control Google, whether that's pay per click or search or AI search. You know, that's really what we talk about now is AI search, geo, whatever. And so we don't really have control of any of that stuff. And we. But what we do know is that we're going to bust our ass. We do the right things and we're going to. You want an agency that's going to just work on the stuff or like one that is going to be there to pivot when things go down because they'll not. I tell listen up and to the right is unrealistic.
Your stock market, your, your. All that stuff, you think it's always up to the right now, as, as its moments. How respond when it starts to go back down is the kind of partner you want because it's going to happen. So this is not going to be a perfect relationship. And let's go into with that, that thought in mind.
You've been burned five times, blah, blah, blah. We can talk about all that, what they did wrong, but we're going to be there to respond and we're going to look out for you and we're going to do the best we can. Does it mean we're going to have 100% success? Absolutely not. So, and your budget's small and you're in South Florida and you want PI cases, you know, there's only so much you can do, so you can just say, hey, we're going to look out for you. We're going to do the right things, and I won't sell you anything that we don't think is going to be a, you know, put you in a better position.
That's the other thing.
Domination versus we're going to move you in a better position than you are now. How long is that going to take to get to where you really want to be?
But there's limitations. You know, there's work the firm needs to do. Your intake system sucks.
You know, you need to work on your brand. You have new videos. You're not investing time into your own marketing.
The marketing company can't just do all that for you. So there's a lot of understanding and things that you have to go through. And sometimes we get a client that, that doesn't really connect and, and we have lots of clients that, you know, it works out very, very well. And we go on a journey with them and we, we take them to multiple offices, multiple states and grow. So. And that's what we look for. You know, not every client's going to be that, but, you know, you still have to run a business. You just have to pay your people and we have to take on firms and try our best.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: So that's the game.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Deep conversations with Kevin and Nick always are people, hey, lawyers, look out for your vendors out there. Make it. You have a relationship with them. Jen Gorev had her on and she said she goes to conferences because she gets to see her vendors in person and meet with them and talk with them and guess who they take care of. Right?
Like she wants to connect with her vendors and have relationship. And I thought that was really cool. So, you know, for a lawyer out there, you probably have lots of vendors, lots of people are paying, you know, they're there to help you, but if you don't engage, you don't show up, you don't do your part, you know, probably not going to go well either way. Tip of the day. Well, Nick, we are running on time here.
I appreciate the conversation today. We can definitely talk longer, for sure.
I want to get a reminder for folks by answering legal. And then of course, your new chat bot, which sounds amazing and it's free people, so you have no excuse not to. To check it out.
Especially my solo firms. I mean, I have a bench of. I call them a bench. It's a bench of lawyers that are either just started or they're about to start. And they reach out to me and just ask you questions or whatever, but, you know, set up a nice little free website. Put a free chatbot on it. Like, just, you know, get these things going. So what's the best way for them to find you again? And check that out.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Sure. So you can find anything about us on answeringlegal.com we have a bunch of products. If you go to the nav, it says products.
If you want just the chatbot, it is answerinlegal.com AI chatbot. You can call us at 631-686-9700. And if you want to talk directly to me because you don't trust anyone else, I am
[email protected] I will respond to you. I will have so much fun doing it. You will make my day.
And let's chat, man.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: I appreciate it. And keep me posted. And you guys have some new stuff coming out the podcast and things like that.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Oh, you're gonna be on it, Kev.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: All right, let's do it. So stay tuned, everyone.
And Also, Nick's on LinkedIn, so go check him out. Follow him there. So I appreciate it, Nick. Thanks so much, everyone.
Intake is super important, and it goes a lot deeper than just a phone system or a chat bot. Things that you need to think about. So we talked about a lot of stuff here, but look deep at yourself and your firm and how you handle things, and it's important stuff. So we'll see you all soon. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Thanks again, Kevin.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Amen.
It.
