4 Reasons Why You Should Rethink Your Client Intake Process (Sponsored)

As you know, there is a tremendous amount of administrative work involved with running a law practice. Products like Clio and Xero are gaining traction with today’s law firms because they help streamline and organize time-consuming processes involved with functions like billing and accounting.

But another area of running a law practice that is particularly cumbersome and that deserves a lot more attention is client intake. Intake has not been diagnosed as a problem area by most firms, but it should be. If you care about case management, why shouldn’t you care about intake management?

Client Intake Is Broken 

Intake is a very important part of the client lifecycle – it’s an integral part of the law firm “sales process,” and the method through which all the necessary information is gathered in order to resolve the legal matter.

The problem is, most firms do not have a systematic intake process in place, making client intake high-friction and inefficient. Sound familiar? Well you’re not alone. For most firms, intake consists of a lot of back and forth communication, which gets scattered across multiple intake forms, email threads, calls, Post-it notes, Excel spreadsheets, etc.

The lack of organization makes it hard to keep track of everything, and when stuff inevitably slips through the cracks, it results in lost revenue, increased expenses, frustrated parties, and even potential malpractice claims down the road.

The worst part of it all is that you can’t bill clients for any of the hours spent during intake, which means the most inefficient area of your practice is actually costing you the most money.

4 Reasons to Rethink Intake

Improving your client intake process can save time, reduce hassle, and prevent stuff from slipping through the cracks. Here are four ways that establishing a systematic, technology-driven client intake process can benefit your law practice:

1. Better Organization and Workflow

Most firms currently still use manual processes for client intake: handwritten notes; logging data into spreadsheets; sending PDF forms and documents to print, fill out, and scan; and lots of emails back and forth.

Using software to manage this entire process will help you be much more organized and drastically reduce wasted time. It will also minimize the number of clients who slip through the cracks, maximizing your conversion rate and increasing your revenue in the process.

2. Cut Down on Data Entry

Whether you do it yourself, hire an employee, or outsource it, data entry is costly in terms of time, money, or both. But data entry is a necessary evil if you’re going to get any value out of a case management system like Clio or MyCase.

The good news is, by using online forms to collect information, you can reduce this manual data entry to a bare minimum. Unlike handwritten intake forms or even fillable PDFs/word docs that have to be re-typed into a case management system later, the data from online forms can easily be manipulated or output into other programs automatically.

For instance, you could export it to Clio using their API, transfer it to an Excel file or Google spreadsheet, plug it into your document automation software or automatically input it into your email marketing software with Zapier.

This automation can save you boatloads of time in the aggregate because no one has to manually transcribe the data from your notes, PDFs, and emails into other programs. Plus it helps eliminate errors caused by typos and illegible handwriting along the way.

3. Happier Clients

With more and more people using smartphones and relying on technology for their daily activities, people have different expectations from the businesses they choose to work with.

Downloading, printing, filling out, and scanning PDF documents is not a very pleasant activity for anyone, let alone a client paying lots of money for legal services. So by asking your clients to do those things in order to work with you, in some ways you’re actually putting up a barrier to getting hired.

By allowing your clients to fill out forms and sign documents online from their computer, smartphone or tablet, you are making their lives easier, and increasing the likelihood that they get you the information you need to do your job in a timely fashion.

Creating a better client experience also helps encourage repeat business as well as more referrals in the future.

4. Reports and Analytics

The fourth benefit of developing an online intake process is that you can get a layer of reports and analytics on top of all this information, in addition to just better storage and organization.

Important data points like where your clients are finding you, what your ROI is on your advertising costs, and what your conversion rate is can all be accessed easily with the help of software. And you won’t have to be an Excel wizard to extract any meaning out of your data.

Leveraging data for better decision making will become increasingly important for law firms as their business model continues to adapt with the changing needs of clients into the future.

Introducing Lexicata: The All-In-One Client Intake Solution for Law Firms

Lexicata is a CRM and client intake software built exclusively for law firms. It’s designed to manage every step of the intake process, from tracking and managing potential clients, to collecting data with online forms, to getting documents signed with seamless e-signatures.

It integrates with products you already use every day to run your law firm, such as Clio, Outlook, and Google Apps. And it includes a dashboard with actionable analytics about where your leads are coming from and how well they are converting into clients.

Adopting an online intake solution can benefit your practice in a number of ways: better organization, greater efficiency, fewer data-entry errors, higher margins, smarter decisions, and happier clients.

We invite you to check out Lexicata today to see how we can help your law firm streamline its intake process.

Book your 15-minute demo of Lexicata by December 1 and receive $100 off your subscription — just enter promo code lawyerist1 when booking from this link (there will be a limited number of appointments available — keep in mind, the demo just has to be scheduled, not conducted, by December 1).

Author Bio 

Aaron George is an entrepreneur with a background in both law and technology. He is co-founder of Lexicata, the only CRM and client intake software designed exclusively for law firms. He previously started a successful mobile app development business during law school. He is an active blogger, graphic designer, coder, and an enthusiast of sports and technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

4 Reasons Why You Should Rethink Your Client Intake Process (Sponsored) was originally published on Lawyerist.