By Gary Falkowtiz
If your firm is spending money to make the phone ring… wait, let’s rephrase this… If your firm is acquiring leads (it doesn’t matter if you’re spending money for those leads), you better be certain that you are handling those leads appropriately.
And if you are a member of a larger firm (acquiring 20+ leads per day), you can’t just assume that your law firm is doing what it’s supposed to. It’s imperative that you frequently assess the 30,000-foot view perspective.
As someone who has consulted law firms throughout the country, and who has focused on law firm intake for the last five years, it has become exceedingly clear to me that law firms are leaving a lot (of cases and money) on the table. How? By not maximizing the front-end of their business. And by “front-end,” I mean their Intake.
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There are many ways that law firms lose potential clients. In my opinion, though, a large percentage of lost leads can be attributed to poor management. Once you are successful enough to make the phone ring or make the emails appear with leads, you need to make sure you have the right procedures and protocol in place to appropriately respond to those leads.
This is what I mean by management – your ability to respond and retain in an effective manner. The more leads that your law firm acquires, the more opportunity to make mistakes. In order to limit the mistakes that are made, everyone needs to be held accountable. But one cannot be held accountable if the work-product is not being reviewed and analyzed.
Everyone makes mistakes. But what separates the good firms from the great firms is the ability to recognize (and manage) those mistakes and make changes to avoid repeating them.
So how do you recognize mistakes within your system? It starts with managing. Whether you have a manager in place (or you are handling this responsibility yourself), you must dig deep and look for the leaks within your system. If you are waiting for the leaks to appear, it will be too late to clog them.
As you begin to truly manage your intake what you will realize is that there will be plenty of opportunity for improvement; some leaks which can be corrected immediately and some leaks which will take time. But the only way to recognize the leaks and begin to clog them is by managing…
Stop taking your intake for granted and start giving it the attention it requires to start maximizing your return on marketing investments.
strong>Gary Falkowtiz is Founding Attorney at Maximum Intake Consulting, Inc. and Managing Partner at The Falkowitz Law Firm, PLLC. He is the Former Managing Attorney at Parker Waichman LLP. Looking for an objective perspective? Gary can be reached at
and (844) 629-4682.
