New client inquiry on line 1: now what?

It's the beginning of a new year, and most lawyers want to have new clients and new matters to start things off. It's also a good time to take stock and make business plans. We hear and read a lot about lawyer marketing these days. Should lawyers use social media to market their practices? What is the correct marketing budget? Are Yellow Pages advertisements still a worthwhile investment? But sometimes less attention is given to what happens when the law firm's marketing efforts succeed and a prospective client contacts the firm for more information about representation. The law firm receptionist is the "Manager of Law Firm First Impressions." This is true whether it's the well-trained and experienced receptionist with a long history with your firm, or someone who is "covering the phones" temporarily while the primary receptionist is absent. So perhaps your firm needs to focus on appropriate training for those who only answer the phone part time or rarely. Many firms are utilizing virtual receptionist services either on a full-time basis or just for some hours of coverage. Much of a telephone receptionist's duties involve taking calls from existing clients or other lawyers and properly routing the calls or taking messages. If the receptionist doesn't handle those duties well, you'll likely hear about it from a client at some point. But the receptionist also handles that extremely important call: the inquiry from a potential new client. And if that is not handled well, you may never hear anything at all. The potential client may simply move on to the next law firm. That's bad for your firm and could represent a waste of marketing efforts and expenses. Even worse, it could mean that one of your treasured referral sources hears back from that potential client that they were not treated well or that you were too busy to talk to them. That could result in a referral source drying up without you ever understanding why. Readers are likely familiar with the late time management guru Stephen Covey and his time management matrix. He assigned four quadrants for determining what tasks are priorities based on their urgency and importance. So quadrant one contained matters that were both urgent and important, while quadrant four included those matters that were both not urgent and not important. As every experienced lawyer understands, inquiries from new potential clients are quadrant one matters: both urgent and important. It's critical for your law practice that you continue to develop new clients with new matters to handle. But it is urgent that the inquiry be handled as promptly as possible, because the potential client will probably continue to look for a lawyer while waiting for your return call. Most lawyers who represent individual consumer clients have had the experience of returning an inquiry call within the hour only to find that the person has already talked to and scheduled a meeting with another attorney and no longer wishes to discuss the legal problem with you. So, what are your law firm's policies and procedures about inquiries from new clients, and, more importantly, what messages do you convey and what training is done to make sure things are handled accordingly? Left to their own devices, receptionists may treat these calls like the dozens of other calls received. The potential client may then end up leaving a message on voice mail, which is returned after the caller has hired that other lawyer or given up entirely on seeking assistance. This is where the Covey analysis of urgency is significant, and the receptionist should be trained to understand the urgency. Noting that you are on the phone and asking the caller if he wants to leave a message or be transferred to voice mail may not be the optimal solution. One would never want to prioritize potential new clients over existing clients. But it's a fact that the existing client who receives a return call in less than an hour is still receiving good service. The new caller on the phone needs to talk to someone now. There is no "one size fits all" solution. Much depends on the number of lawyers, the available staff and the type of practice. The practitioner who limits his practice to antitrust defense is probably not going to lose a new client if a message is taken and a call returned within an hour or so. But the OUI defense firm or family law firm may have callers who have obtained a list of lawyers' phone numbers and are going down the list calling and saying, "No, thanks - no message" if they can't talk to someone right away. So the receptionist's job is to keep them on the phone very briefly and find someone for them to talk to about their legal problem. One solution is to convene a meeting among the partners, agree on a policy, and get that policy in writing. Then the firm can have a training lunch to outline the procedures, followed up by regular training sessions to fine tune and improve the procedures. Here's a quick agenda for the meeting: 1) Who gets the new client inquiry? 2) What happens when the lawyer who is supposed to receive the new client inquiry is on the phone? 3) Should lawyers be handling intake initial inquiries at all? 4) What's the proper response to questions? With regard to the last item, there should be written guidance for everyone in the law firm (at least the smaller law firm), because anyone might pick up a ringing call when the receptionist is busy. There should be accurate, but standard, answers to questions like: "How much does X cost?" And, because you cannot anticipate every possible off-the-wall question, a little training in legal ethics is required. Even a simple question - like "Are your lawyers good lawyers?" or "Will bankruptcy get rid of my debts?" - can have significant legal ethics implications if handled by an untrained staff person. Your staff person should know not to guess or veer from approved language that is given in the training. He or she should be trained to be positive and helpful, e.g., "I understand that your hearing is set for Friday. How would you like to visit with a lawyer first thing in the morning?" One surprising thing about doing that type of policy establishment, documentation and review is that some of your more experienced staff members may learn something, or they may have better information and ideas than the lawyers since they have more experience handling new client inquiries. Once you've established your protocols for handling new client inquiries over the telephone, you need to institute a similar process for email inquiries, web page inquires and social media inquiries. A final step after the new client inquiry is completed is documentation of the conversation. Even a brief discussion in general terms implicates client confidentiality and conflict of interest concerns. Therefore, it becomes critically important to document who the lawyer talked with, who any opposing party might be, and generally what was said. Such documentation should be available to everyone in the firm for future conflict checking. Marketing and client development is an ongoing part of the business of law practice. Some law firms have large marketing budgets while others have very small ones and depend mainly on referrals. Whatever your firm's marketing methods are, everyone should take the time to institute a system to make sure that once a potential client contacts your office, his inquiry is handled professionally and promptly. Many of these potential clients will go on to become actual clients. The better the first impression that you leave with them, the better it is for your ongoing attorney-client relationship. ----- Jim Calloway is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. He publishes the weblog Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips at http://jimcalloway.typepad.com. Published: Thu, Feb 26, 2015