Table of Contents
A Great Intake System Can Increase Your Law Firm’s Conversions
In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, small law firms need to adopt effective marketing strategies to achieve high conversion rates. One crucial yet often overlooked aspect of successful marketing is the law firm’s client intake system.
Generating leads and prospects is only half the battle. The other half is having an intake system that makes it easy, quick, and comfortable for leads to become paying clients. In other words, a great client intake system complements your marketing efforts to grow your law business.
Improving your intake process is a crucial part of every small law firm marketing blueprint. Here’s how you can do that to boost conversions and scale your legal practice.
What Is a Client Intake System?
A client intake system is the onboarding process that law firms use to collect contact, personal, and case information from prospective clients. The collected information will help you determine if a lead’s legal claim has merit and decide if their case is a good fit for your law firm.
An intake system typically involves various elements, such as:
- Contact methods
- Data tracking and collection software
- Email automation
- Trained customer experience staff
The Step-by-Step Client Intake Process
The client intake process sets the foundation for successful collaboration and allows the law firm to gain a comprehensive understanding of its clients’ needs and goals.
Your intake process begins when you generate leads, often referred to as potential new clients (PNC), from your website or marketing campaigns. It usually goes as follows:
- Capturing the PNC’s contact information:
Your website should make it very easy for PNCs to contact you, whether through contact forms, email, or phone calls. Their contact information is the only way to connect with them and convince them to hire you.
2. PNC Screening:
Conduct a screening test to check if the lead is a good fit for your law firm. At this stage, you may not have much information about the lead’s legal case, but you should have enough to decide whether it falls within your practice area, interest, and location.
3. Initial consultation:
The initial consultation is your chance to leave a great first impression and learn what you need about the client and their case. Listen and be empathetic. Take time to build rapport and gain insights on their legal issues that will determine subsequent steps.
4. Checking for Conflicts of interest:
A conflict of interest with existing or previous clients could prevent your law firm from working with a new potential client. Research existing clients’ case records to ensure no conflict of interest exists. This step is crucial to avoid professional and ethical issues in the future.
5. Gathering information through an intake form:
Create and send a comprehensive questionnaire where the potential client can add their contact details, the nature of their legal issue, and the parties involved in the case. Make sure you request any information you deem necessary for the case.
6. Sending the engagement letter:
An engagement letter must outline the scope and terms of legal representation, deliverables, timelines, and payment terms. Once your PNC signs the letter, they become a client. Congrats!
7. Regular check-ins and reporting:
Throughout the legal engagement, maintain regular communication with the client through scheduled check-ins and progress reports. These updates help keep the client informed about case progress and performance, address any concerns, and ensure that the case stays on track.
If you are struggling to generate leads in the first place, you may want to try out our proven marketing ideas for law firms.
What Is the Role of an Intake System in Conversion Optimization?
An intake system plays a vital role in optimizing conversions. It is a structured process to drive leads from different channels, such as Google ad campaigns and search engines, into the sales funnel smoothly and effectively. Therefore, your conversion rate heavily depends on how good the intake process is.
It also ensures that potential customers’ inquiries are answered promptly by providing an efficient and optimized customer service experience.
By having a well-built client intake system, your law firm can enhance its chances of converting leads into paying clients.
A well-designed client intake system can:
- Save time by streamlining the onboarding process so you don’t lose qualified leads due to easily-avoidable inconveniences, such as response delays.
- Enhance client communication
- Screen clients efficiently so you can take on the right cases, and
- Build your reputation and generate positive reviews to attract new clients.
Consult a law firm marketing agency to help you create a frictionless intake system.
How Can Your Law Firm Create an Intake System that Converts?
Creating an effective system requires careful planning and execution. Here’s how to create a client intake system that can enhance your law firm’s conversion rate:
- Evaluate Your Current Process: Assess your existing intake process to identify areas that need improvement, such as:
- Contact methods
- Phone answering and forwarding procedures
- Email response time, and
- Overall user experience
- Set Clear Goals: Define clear goals for your system. Determine the desired action you want potential clients to take and decide the desired conversion rate you aim to achieve. You can also determine your target audience and what makes a high-qualifying lead.
- Optimize Your Website: Ensure your website is user-friendly, visually appealing, and search engine optimized (SEO) to make it easy for leads to hire you. You should also place intuitive contact forms and write strong CTAs throughout your website. A law firm SEO agency in Atlanta can you optimize your website and content for SEO.
- Optimize for Mobile Phones: Mobile optimization is crucial, as more than 90% of people browse the internet on their phones. Make sure that your entire intake system can be navigated on mobile just as easily and smoothly as on desktop.
- Train Your Team: Provide comprehensive customer service training to your team. Ensure they possess the necessary skills to handle potential client inquiries professionally. Prompt responses and effective communication should be a top priority for your law business.
- Monitor and Enhance: Regularly monitor and enhance your intake system’s performance. Use analytics tools to track conversions on your site, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven improvements to maximize conversions.
Build a Smooth and Efficient Intake System
Constellation Marketing is helping law firms across the U.S. make the most out of digital marketing and grow their revenue. We can review your intake process and advise you on how to improve it to consistently make more conversions. Contact us today for a free consultation!
F.A.Q.
How Long Does the Client Intake Process Usually Take?
The duration of the client intake process varies depending on the project’s complexity and the client’s responsiveness. On average, completing the intake process can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.
How Do After-Hours Legal Intake Services Benefit Law Firms?
After-hours legal intake services ensure potential client inquiries and requests are handled promptly, even outside regular business hours. This is especially helpful in cases of emergency.
Consistent 24/7 availability can improve customer satisfaction, increase conversion rates, and provide a competitive edge over other law firms.
