Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 222: 4 External Law Firm Systems Every Law Firm Needs to Scale
Transcript
- 0:00Davina: When the client intake and onboarding system is set up to take advantage of automation tools, it is also the best time to set forth expectations for both parties to educate the client on your policies and procedures and your processes, and also establish those clear boundaries. If this system is not set up properly, then you are setting yourself, your team and your clients up for issues down the road. So while automation may be important, you wanna make sure that you are accomplishing these goals with your client intake and onboarding system that you are really setting clear expectations and letting them know what is expected of them, what is expected of you, and to establish those clear boundaries and share with them how you work as a law firm.
- 0:50Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from six to seven figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams.
- 1:36Now here's Devina.
- 1:41Davina: Hi. This is Devina. And before we jump into today's show, I'd like first to introduce you to some of our sponsors. When prospective clients are looking for an attorney, they usually turn to Google first. Optimize My Firm helps law firms grow their practices and attract more right fit clients through on page and back end search engine optimization.
- 2:04Optimize My Firm can help your firm rank higher on Google so that clients can find you before they find your competition. They serve personal injury, family law, workers' comp, immigration, and other types of law firms. Optimize My Firm does SEO the right way, delivering meaningful results with geographic exclusivity and no contracts. Contact them today at optimizemyfirm.com or click the link in the show notes. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast.
- 2:36I'm your host, Devina Frederick. And today, I want to take a deep dive with you into the world of law firm systems. I'm sure if you followed me for a while, you've heard me say that systems and automation are not the same thing, though often they are conflated. A system is a method for consistently accomplishing repetitive tasks. So rather than repeatedly reinventing the wheel each time we undertake a task, we record the process each step of it so that we or someone else can accomplish the same task using that recorded process when it is time to accomplish it again in a same or similar manner that we were able to accomplish it in the first place.
- 3:19Automation on the other hand consists of technological tools applied to systems to make the operation of the systems faster, easier and more efficient. Systems also may be and often are operated manually or with some combination of manual human intervention and technology. So you probably heard me say that there are seven essential systems every law firm requires if they want to scale to seven figures and beyond. In fact, I've written a book on the subject. It's called The Wealthy Woman Lawyer's Guide to Building a Systems Driven Law Firm Business, Seven Essential Systems You Need to Take Back Your Time, Avoid Burnout and Create Lasting Wealth.
- 4:00If you have not yet read it, I encourage you to do so. You can purchase a copy using the link in the show notes for this episode. Today though, I thought I would share with you four of those systems as I've divided the seven essential systems into two categories, external and internal systems. External systems, I have defined as client facing systems. Those processes and procedures that bring prospective clients into our world and move the right ones closer to working with us, fulfilling our roles as attorneys to help them solve their legal issues, and then wrapping up when the case is closed.
- 4:38Internal systems are those systems all businesses need going on behind the scenes if they want to operate profitably, sustainably, and become a wealth generating business. I'll cover these in next week's episode. But for now, let's move a little closer and dive a little deeper into the external systems. So system number one that you must have, if you want to operate and grow a profitable, sustainable offer business is a client attraction and conversion system. This system set up correctly helps more of the right prospective new clients find us so they can reach out to us with their legal issues when they arise.
- 5:18And it also repels those who would not be right fit clients. Your system is not an effective system if it doesn't repel those who would not be right fit clients as well as attract the right fit clients. You may think of it as a marketing and sales machine or a sales funnel. So we are essentially sharing our brand, our vision, and our services with as many people as possible who may likely become our clients one day or know someone who might become our clients. So we're making them aware that we exist and that we may be the best solution for solving their legal issues.
- 5:56That is the first goal is to increase our visibility among a wide range of prospects and communicate with such clarity exactly what we do to help people solve their legal issues that people can identify and know instantly whether or not they need somebody like us to help them. Our goal at this stage is not to sign up clients at the initial stage, but it is to move them one step closer to our law firm business and potentially working with us is to help them sort of self identify whether or not they even need somebody who provides the services that we offer. Also, we want to propel the tire kickers, those people who are not right fit to work with us, either because they don't have a legal problem or they don't have a problem within our area of expertise, or they cannot or not willing to pay for our services. Once we move those prospects closer to us, we can discuss their pain points more specifically with them and move them closer to scheduling a consultation with our firm. Consultation is their opportunity, the prospective client's opportunity for clarity on their issue and next steps.
- 7:10And it is our opportunity to evaluate and assess their case to determine whether or not this is a right fit client for our law firm. If they are a right fit, signing them up as clients becomes very frictionless. If at first you're doing this sort of sifting and sorting through your client attraction and conversion system. So system number two of the external or client facing systems occurs when a client has hired us. It is a system that not only makes the law firm client relationship official and legal, but it kicks off the beginning of our work.
- 7:48It's also the system that sets the tone for the entire law firm client relationship. It's called the client intake and onboarding system. Client intake and onboarding system. The client intake and onboarding system is exactly what it sounds like. This is when you provide the contract that lays out all the terms and conditions of the lawyer client relationship.
- 8:09You collect the retainer or flat fee. You usher them through the welcome process. So this might involve an initial strategy meeting with the attorney after the contract is signed and that retainer or fee is collected. Or it may be as simple as sending them a welcome package with all of our policies and procedures. When the client intake and onboarding system is set up to take advantage of automation tools, it is also the best time to set forth expectations for both parties to educate the client on your policies and procedures and your processes, and also establish those clear boundaries.
- 8:49If this system is not set up properly, then you are setting yourself, your team and your clients up for issues down the road. So while automation may be important, you wanna make sure that you are accomplishing these goals with your client intake and onboarding system, that you are really setting clear expectations and letting them know what is expected of them, what is expected of you, and to establish those clear boundaries and share with them how you work as a law firm. The third external system is what most attorneys think of when they think of systems. And that is fulfillment of our obligation as attorneys handling the client's matters. So this is you handling a client's legal issue.
- 9:34And that is the client service and fulfillment system. This is where we roll up our sleeves and we get to work solving their client's problem, their legal problem. So oftentimes when you mentioned systems to lawyers, we think of case management systems like Clio, MyCase, PracticePancer, and other case management systems, Smokeball, whatever, what do you think of? So while case management systems can be wonderful tools for lawyers to automate certain steps of legal process. Lawyers developed case management systems long before there were technological tools like automation software.
- 10:10So lawyers had systematic processes for running cases through similar cases. So instead we ran manual systems with the help of team members like legal assistants and their paralegals. Even with case management software, you likely will have and need a team to manage the flow of legal work, especially if you wanna serve more and more clients and scale your business. What I find to be missing most times in is the service aspect of the client service and fulfillment system. So we get so focused on the fulfillment piece, which is our job as lawyers, that we fail to create a high touch experience for the client and really creating a systematic way of making the clients feel like they're well taken care of throughout their entire case, that they're seen, that they're heard, and they're not just a number or a dollar sign.
- 11:03High touch client service can easily become the norm within your law firm without you personally being the one to provide that direct high touch experience. Your team can help you provide that high touch experience if you learn to set up a system and perhaps automate some of those pieces of that system properly to make sure that your clients are seen and heard. Also a well executed client service system trains your clients to provide you and the firm with feedback throughout the engagement with you. So you can immediately address any issues as they arrive. This can potentially save you from those embarrassing and upsetting one star reviews from dissatisfied and angry clients.
- 11:49All right, the last of the external systems I'm gonna share with you today is client feedback and off boarding system. The purpose of the client feedback and off boarding system is to close out the client's matter in a manner that makes them feel satisfied and whole, and also in a manner that results in positive reviews and future referrals for the law firm. It also makes it crystal clear that matter is concluded. You are no longer in an attorney client relationship for purposes of this particular matter and all monies owed must be paid if they have not already been paid. Hopefully we will have set up your system so that all money is collected well before this final stage.
- 12:29So you're not sitting there trying to close out a matter when the money hasn't yet been collected. So that's it for today's episode. I know it's a short one this week, but I think we covered quite a bit. I hope you took some good notes. I'll be back next week to cover the three internal systems.
- 12:44If as you were listening, you realize you do not have all four of these external systems in place and set up as well as they should be, or perhaps you're struggling to figure out how to do that, then I invite you to enroll in the training that I have created as a companion to my book on law firm systems. This is a paid opportunity course. It is law firm system solution. And in it, I teach you everything you need to know to implement systems, all seven essential systems in your law firm with ease. Also included our templates, resources, guides, cheat sheets, that's along with all the video recordings and the audio recordings so you can listen at your leisure and on your own time.
- 13:30And also you have access to me through a group. And to make it as easy as possible for you to get started, I have created that link and put it for you in the show notes. You no longer have to worry about recreating the wheel yourself because I'm going to walk you through step by step how to set up systems. So go grab this resource now. In honor of the season, I wanna let you know, I am not waiting until Black Friday to offer this powerful training for 50% off From the day of the published date of this podcast through Cyber Monday, I'm going to be offering this training for 50% off.
- 14:08It's never been, and it never will be more affordable for you to get this training and all the help that it provides and access to me to help you set up your law firm systems. So thanks again for making the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast the number one podcast for women and law in The US, and I'll see you soon.
- 14:26Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.