One of the significant challenges of law firms is having an intake service that connects with clients at any time of day or night. Outsourcing that work to a legal intake call center is one answer, and it suits some firms much better than others.
Client intake is an essential activity for any legal or whatnot business. It is the first significant marketing activity to having a lead conversion system that delivers a steady flow of new clients to your firm. Initial contact with a client allows the firm to build rapport and screen unwanted clients due to imminent conflict.
An excellent intake system will benefit your firm’s bottom line more than just other legal marketing campaigns as an alternative. You must choose to outsource legal services rather than waste money due to unanswered, unreturned, or improperly answered calls.
An intake service is a 24/7 BPO solution to an otherwise burdensome problem. Intake services employ enough staff to offer 24-hour attention (or just after-hours, depending on the firm’s needs), including holidays. Law firms can have a live-voice response at the exact time clients make contact. The intake service is commonly outsourced and self-governed so that it takes care of its employees.
This saves time and money in human resources, making it affordable and profitable. By outsourcing an intake call center, firms can respond to clients exactly when the client makes contact. More importantly, the service allows the law firm to focus on doing the principal transactions of their business instead of constantly answering incoming calls.
Through those conversations, intake call centers identify each call’s pertinence and take appropriate action. The call center aims to integrate efforts across the firm in new practice areas. Through the outsourced call centers, law firms can process new clients, send their documents via email, schedule appointments for hot prospects, tailor their scripts, prioritize qualified leads, authenticate representation, etc.
What Is Legal Intake Outsourcing?
Legal intake outsourcing means a third-party team handles a firm’s first conversation with prospective clients. It answers in the firm’s name, asks the qualifying questions the firm has written, takes down the names needed for a conflict check, and books the consultation. The firm gets a completed intake record instead of a message to return.
The legal judgement doesn’t move. An intake team doesn’t tell a caller whether they have a case, doesn’t quote fees beyond what the firm has scripted, and doesn’t clear conflicts. It collects the details your attorneys need to run the check. The decision to take the matter, and the fee agreement, stay with the firm.
Intake is the fullest of three levels of call coverage. A legal answering service takes the call and an accurate message. A legal call screening service checks each caller against a short set of rules and routes the ones worth an attorney’s time. A legal intake call center runs the whole first conversation through to a booked consultation.
The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Legal Intake
The case for it
- Calls are answered when they come in, including evenings, weekends and holidays, which is often when someone with a legal problem finally picks up the phone.
- Every caller gets the same questions, so attorneys see records they can compare, not whatever the person on the front desk thought to write down.
- Attorneys stop taking first calls from people the firm can’t help.
- You pay for coverage, not for recruiting, training and scheduling enough in-house staff to cover every hour.
The case against it
- Someone has to write the criteria down. An outsourced team can only qualify callers against rules the firm has made explicit, and many firms find they’ve never agreed on them.
- An outside agent won’t know your regulars. A receptionist of ten years knows which referral sources and long-standing clients go straight through. An outsourced team knows only what you tell it.
- Existing clients need rules too. Without them, a client asking about a hearing date is handled like a new lead.
- Managing a vendor is real work. Someone at the firm has to review calls, update scripts when practice areas change, and check that records arrive complete.
When to Outsource Legal Intake, and When Not To
Outsourcing intake tends to make sense when:
- you advertise, and calls outside office hours go to voicemail;
- attorneys are taking first calls themselves, or returning messages hours later;
- web form leads aren’t called back the same day;
- intake quality depends on who happens to pick up.
It’s usually too early when:
- call volume is low and most callers only need a message taken, which an answering service covers for less;
- the firm hasn’t decided which matters it takes. Outsourcing intake before then just records the confusion faster.
If new inquiries reach you by web form, email and chat as well as by phone, look at legal contact center outsourcing, which runs one intake process across every channel, rather than a phone-only service.
When choosing an intake service, the factors law firms should consider are:
• Overall strategic goals in hiring a call center
Law firms should consider the main reasons they employ outsourced intake services, such as reducing costs, ensuring that leads are taken care of, or buying cheaper ads during after-hours. Knowing the business goal will make the selection process easier.
• Call center that captures new cases, filters leads, and prioritizes cases
Call centers that offer legal intake often have complex structures. Some call centers capture new cases only; others take calls aside from handling cases. A good call center can design a tailored system that filters out leads, handles high-priority cases, etc. Hiring a call center that understands the unique needs of law firms is essential. Large call centers are often structured to hold non-complex, high-volume traffic. On the other hand, mid-sized call centers can be customized to the specific requirements of attorneys in general and your firm in particular.
• Sound client intake process
Aside from taking calls, a dedicated call center should also conduct initial screenings and set up meetings with potential clients for the firm’s lawyers. A systematized and efficient process could eliminate confusion for the firm and its clients, which could increase new long-term clients in the long run. Improving sound and reproducible practices in routine business activities is the primary step to improving a law firm’s profitability.
• Expertise in coordinating efforts across the firm
A good contact center should also coordinate efforts across the firm, especially regarding new practice areas. When a category, for example, has just been created, the call center should provide the lawyer’s name working on a similar transaction for the firm. Ideally, this call center is under marketing or library, not taxation or finance.
Once intake is running, use our scorecard for an effective legal intake call center to check it’s working.
If intake should move out of your office, see how our legal intake team qualifies callers and books consultations. Magellan Solutions is an offshore outsourcing solutions company located in the Philippines. We are contracted to establish, extend, and support existing customer contact centers and business processes. Fill out the form below. Contact us!
