Latest / Justice Team Podcast / Client Intake and Marketing Improvements by AI with Eric Transue

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Client Intake and Marketing Improvements by AI with Eric Transue · Justice Team Podcast

• 0:02
  Bob: Hey, it's Bob Simon taking a break to tell you about CallRail.
• 0:06
  CallRail is a product that my firm uses, and what CallRail does is it plugs into
• 0:10
  your phone calls with your intake and with your clients to record those phone calls
• 0:15
  as real time transcripts so you can get intelligence and with the attorney share.
• 0:19
  Plugin.
• 0:19
  You can actually in real time, be able to send a referral out through
• 0:23
  the marketplace to find the best match all made possible with CallRail
• 0:26
  being plugged into your firm's intake with real intelligence CallRail.
• 0:34
  Welcome to this episode of the Justice Team Podcast on the Justice Team Network.
• 0:37
  I am your host, Bob Simon.
• 0:38
  Today we're talking about.
• 0:40
  The innovation of digital marketing, using artificial intelligence to do
• 0:44
  voice intake, what's new in the legal industry, and how artificial intelligence
• 0:48
  is changing the landscape on how consumers are finding attorneys, and
• 0:51
  how you as a lawyer or a lead person in the legal space, can leverage a lot
• 0:55
  of the opportunity out there to better find cases suited for you and what
• 0:58
  to do if they're not suited for you.
• 1:00
  And I work very honored to have on the Eric TransU, who's
• 1:04
  a digital marketing guru, and Eric's gonna explain to you about.
• 1:08
  Some exciting stuff in the legal field.
• 1:10
  Eric: Awesome.
• 1:11
  Happy to be here, Bob.
• 1:12
  Um, so like I said, I'm Eric TransU, uh, computer science major.
• 1:16
  I've worked as a network engineer for.
• 1:18
  14 years, which kind of transitioned, uh, slowly into the AI space for me.
• 1:25
  Um, and, uh, been working a lot now in, in the legal field with
• 1:29
  ai, which is absolutely moving at a lightning pace right now.
• 1:33
  Before
• 1:34
  Bob: you, before you were in legal, um, you were in a
• 1:36
  different kind of vertical, right?
• 1:37
  Real estate?
• 1:38
  Yeah, I was
• 1:38
  Eric: in real estate.
• 1:39
  So originally I was with, um, a company called Property First.
• 1:43
  Who ended up merging with company LoopNet, which was then purchased
• 1:46
  by CoStar, who owns apartments.com and homes.com and all those.
• 1:50
  And I was a network engineer, like I said there for 14 years.
• 1:53
  I, uh, then my son was born, um, and I wanted to be there a little bit more.
• 1:59
  I couldn't just, uh, fly off to San Francisco for the 24 hour
• 2:02
  notice to go install servers.
• 2:04
  And so I kind of started my own company, an SEO company
• 2:07
  that I was doing on the side.
• 2:08
  Bob: Well, I mean, do you feel like the real, because it seems like
• 2:11
  the real estate in industry was way more innovative and on top of things
• 2:14
  than the legal industry was using AI and intake and things like that.
• 2:18
  Eric: Yeah, I, I think it is.
• 2:19
  Um, you know, obviously there's.
• 2:22
  A big lead generation platform for real estate.
• 2:25
  And when that first started, it was great.
• 2:27
  Now, you know, I, I used to have tons of real estate sites out there to generate
• 2:31
  leads, and I would see a lead come in on this site and 10 minutes later, come in on
• 2:35
  this site and then come in on this site.
• 2:36
  So, you know, a real estate agent was buying a lead thinking they were the
• 2:40
  exclusive person getting that lead, when in fact the consumer was signing
• 2:45
  up on every site that popped up on their phone or on their computer.
• 2:48
  And now you've had, you know.
• 2:51
  A number of agents buying the same lead over and over again,
• 2:53
  and it became very difficult.
• 2:55
  Um, I find that the follow up was the biggest thing that was lacking.
• 2:59
  You know, people thought, oh, I got a lead now.
• 3:00
  This is a, a closed home that I'm gonna be able to sell.
• 3:03
  Oh, you gotta, you gotta go fast and you gotta go fast.
• 3:05
  And you know, I started running a lot of Facebook ads for real estate.
• 3:09
  And the leads were good, but you could hand the lead to two different
• 3:13
  agents and one will tell you, Eric, you're giving me crap leads.
• 3:15
  The other one, like, these are the greatest leads ever.
• 3:17
  And it really just turned out to be what is the follow up and what's the timeline?
• 3:20
  Because when you catch people on Facebook, they're a lot
• 3:22
  earlier in the cycle usually.
• 3:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:24
  In the real estate world, it's not someone that's already going to open houses.
• 3:27
  They're really just starting their research.
• 3:29
  And what happened in the real estate field, which I think
• 3:31
  is gonna continue to change.
• 3:33
  A lot of the consumers knew more about the market and the houses than the
• 3:37
  real estate agents because there was so much information, access to data
• 3:40
  and so much information out there.
• 3:42
  Bob: Well, what are we seeing now?
• 3:43
  'cause you know, Eric, bill, what we're using at our law firm for AI,
• 3:49
  voice intake, and I think a lot of people are very interested in, in it.
• 3:53
  Um, and I know you're starting to offer workshops at Justice
• 3:55
  HQ to show people how to build.
• 3:57
  This exact product.
• 3:58
  So can you kind of walk us through what you built, the guardrails that you put on
• 4:03
  it, and kind of the use case that, like my firm for instance, is using it for?
• 4:07
  Eric: Yeah, of course.
• 4:08
  So the voice AI is not necessarily to replace an intake team, but
• 4:14
  it's there to do some filtering.
• 4:16
  'cause you are gonna get.
• 4:17
  A lot of spam calls, depending on the time of the year, you get a lot of political
• 4:21
  calls and all of that takes manpower in order to, you know, filter those out.
• 4:25
  Right.
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  And when it comes to legal, you know, a lot of us are in certain areas, so
• 4:30
  for instance, in a personal injury attorney, but we get calls for evictions
• 4:34
  or business law and that's gonna take up time with the intake team when
• 4:38
  those people call to vet that out, figure out where to, where to put it.
• 4:42
  Route them to a different firm.
• 4:44
  So what the AI can do, and, and we rolled it out initially just on the after hour
• 4:49
  calls because, um, you usually pay, you know, VAs or whoever it is, some sort
• 4:55
  of after hour service to take those calls, which could easily be done by ai.
• 5:00
  Now, with the guardrails you're talking about, what we've put in
• 5:03
  is, okay, this is our wheelhouse.
• 5:05
  If something falls into this location or this type of matter.
• 5:09
  Keep it in-house, send it to our CRM, which happens to be Cleo Grow right now.
• 5:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:14
  But whatever CRM you're using, you could route it there.
• 5:16
  If it's not, what do we do with this?
• 5:19
  Yeah.
• 5:19
  If
• 5:19
  Bob: it, if it goes, if it meets your firm, criteria of what you built
• 5:22
  goes to our firm, it could hot or warm transfer to our intake team.
• 5:26
  All that calls recorded, transcribed, goes directly into Clio Grow.
• 5:30
  Eric: And that's the great thing about the AI is, is it
• 5:32
  all comes down to the prompting.
• 5:34
  So you can make certain calls.
• 5:35
  Like if you say a certain thing on that call, I could say, Hey,
• 5:38
  trigger this now and do this.
• 5:40
  So basically I've got a back injury.
• 5:42
  Okay, boom.
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  We're gonna high priority this, we're gonna do a warmer transfer, or we're
• 5:46
  gonna blast off a text message or an email to alert someone that we need to
• 5:50
  get back to this caller immediately.
• 5:52
  Or like I said, just transfer them warm right there to a phone number,
• 5:56
  and that can be picked based off what they said earlier in the call.
• 6:00
  The call is completely transcribed.
• 6:02
  You could.
• 6:03
  Do things off of that transcription at any time during the call, or
• 6:07
  it could just be sent into the CRM as well, so at least they have all
• 6:10
  the context and not just a summary.
• 6:12
  You could go back and read through.
• 6:13
  Bob: Yeah, and the ethical guardrails are you have to disclose, correct.
• 6:16
  You're using artificial intelligence.
• 6:18
  There's a way that you do it.
• 6:19
  If you call our number, it's eight four.
• 6:21
  Four.
• 6:22
  Get team or the team?
• 6:25
  The team.
• 6:25
  The team.
• 6:26
  Yeah.
• 6:26
  Sorry.
• 6:26
  Eight, four.
• 6:26
  Four.
• 6:26
  The team, if you call that you'll be able to talk to our.
• 6:29
  AI voice agent to see what Eric built.
• 6:31
  But the guardrails, it'll let you know it's artificial intelligence.
• 6:34
  You could tell if it meets our firm criteria that it's gonna
• 6:37
  say that our someone from our team's gonna call you back.
• 6:39
  It cannot give legal advice.
• 6:41
  You can try to trick it.
• 6:41
  It will not, and it will tell you that it's gonna have a
• 6:45
  lawyer from our team call you.
• 6:46
  But the interesting thing is, what you've built with the integration with attorney
• 6:49
  share is if it doesn't meet your firm criteria, and it's still a valid case,
• 6:55
  that if somebody helps with what happens.
• 6:58
  Eric: Well, if it's still a valid case that someone needs help with, it's
• 7:00
  gonna be sent in to attorney share, which then could be, you know, routed
• 7:04
  out to whatever attorneys in the system match that particular matter,
• 7:09
  and there'll be other notifications or waterfalls or however you've set up
• 7:12
  your account with an attorney share.
• 7:13
  Um, that this could, now you can monetize these matters that normally
• 7:18
  you wouldn't, you wouldn't handle
• 7:19
  Bob: and track them all and track
• 7:20
  Eric: them all.
• 7:21
  Bob: There's no reason why a lawyer would have to hang up the
• 7:23
  phone and say, I can't help you.
• 7:24
  Eric: Yeah.
• 7:25
  Right.
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  And you know, we, we connect the knowledge base to all of this, so it
• 7:28
  will answer all your normal questions that may come in, you know, what are
• 7:31
  your hours, where are you located?
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  Um, you could really put anything in that knowledge base that you want to
• 7:37
  really answer all those questions.
• 7:38
  Because someone may call in and then, you know, they start to, they're talking
• 7:41
  to AI and they wanna play around.
• 7:43
  They, they always do that.
• 7:44
  Okay.
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  How long have you been in business, you know?
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  What cases have you tried?
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  And all of that could be put into a knowledge base to answer a lot
• 7:51
  of questions, that, to be honest, a front desk person may not even
• 7:54
  know the answers to exactly.
• 7:55
  So,
• 7:56
  Bob: and then, um.
• 7:57
  How many calls can it handle at a time?
• 8:00
  Eric: Well, that could be ramped up, uh, pretty quickly.
• 8:02
  There's different plans depending on the service that you're using.
• 8:04
  There's a lot of services out there right now that are offering AI calling.
• 8:09
  Um, we're using a, a platform that gives us some flexibility in
• 8:13
  order to ramp up as we need to.
• 8:15
  Um, but.
• 8:17
  Most of 'em out there, depending on how much you're willing to pay there,
• 8:19
  there's really no limit on how many calls they can have at the time.
• 8:21
  Yeah, I've heard
• 8:21
  Bob: some that could do hundreds of calls at the same time.
• 8:24
  Eric: Yeah.
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  Like most of them, the basic plan will do 30 concurrent calls out the box Wow.
• 8:28
  At a time, which most, you know, a law firm's not gonna have 30
• 8:31
  people calling at the same time.
• 8:32
  Most of, unless you're running a crazy ad or got some crazy press,
• 8:35
  uh, immediately that, that's driving people to call the firm.
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  But for most.
• 8:41
  The basic plans on most of these are going to, um, satisfy what you need.
• 8:46
  The other part is.
• 8:48
  The voices are constantly getting updated.
• 8:50
  Those are getting better and better.
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  I mean, just the voice from three months ago compared to today is
• 8:53
  so much different and it's so,
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  Bob: it's pleasant to talk to.
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  It's empathetic.
• 8:56
  It listens.
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  It can also speak different languages,
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  Eric: right?
• 8:58
  It could speak different languages.
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  They're multilingual.
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  The, the latency is really coming down on these.
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  Um, and, and the different models are just being able to process the
• 9:07
  data quicker and get back to you.
• 9:09
  Now there's a fine line there, you know, where something's answering too fast.
• 9:13
  For instance, when I used to run my lead generation sites, when someone signed up.
• 9:17
  They'd get a text message immediately, but this text messages
• 9:19
  was three or four sentences.
• 9:21
  They knew right away this wasn't, you know, it didn't seem natural.
• 9:24
  They knew it wasn't a real person, but it also didn't seem natural
• 9:27
  and you didn't get those replies.
• 9:28
  So trying to put some of that in there, you know, you could have the
• 9:31
  box with, um, and uh, and, and you could do so much programming there.
• 9:35
  Where they do get caught up sometimes is some of the natural language stuff.
• 9:39
  For instance, when we were first setting up our bot, you know, you'd say I was
• 9:42
  in an accident on the 4 0 5 freeway.
• 9:45
  And I says, okay, so you were on the accident, an accident on the 405 freeway.
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  So, you know, you gotta play with some of that stuff.
• 9:51
  And there's constant tweaking and prompting.
• 9:53
  But man, it, it's, it's really good.
• 9:55
  And, and what you can push out right now, um, with very little expertise mm-hmm.
• 10:03
  Is amazing.
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  But where you got it?
• 10:06
  Watch out is like you said, the guardrail.
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  So it doesn't go off and start giving legal advice or,
• 10:11
  or doing these weird things.
• 10:12
  Yes.
• 10:12
  That you in trouble.
• 10:13
  Law firms.
• 10:13
  Bob: Yeah.
• 10:13
  Law firms have to own the intake.
• 10:15
  It's as if that person works for your firm.
• 10:17
  Right.
• 10:17
  Right.
• 10:17
  So first of all, people reach out to you, just e transue@justiceteam.com?
• 10:22
  Yes.
• 10:22
  T-R-A-N-S-U-E.
• 10:24
  E transu@justiceteam.com and Eric will walk you through the process.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  And help you set these things up.
• 10:31
  We always say like instead of going just one to your firm, go one to all
• 10:34
  with the attorney share plugin because it'll auto post the cases for you.
• 10:37
  Then you can track everything.
• 10:39
  Um, I. These things are all so low cost now because of technology.
• 10:43
  It's crazy.
• 10:44
  I never thought we could compete in the quote unquote call center.
• 10:47
  Eric: They are, and the cost is going down because the models
• 10:49
  are competing against each other.
• 10:50
  Now you've got Claude with Anthropic, you've got Chat, GPT, and all of them are
• 10:54
  coming out with their different models and it's just a race like the best one today.
• 10:59
  It's not gonna be the best one next week, but there's testing and you gotta get to
• 11:03
  a certain point where it's enough, right?
• 11:05
  There's always more.
• 11:05
  You could always be chasing more.
• 11:07
  I gotta get better, better.
• 11:08
  But if you've got a model that's working and it's answering your
• 11:10
  calls and doing everything you need to, that's where you gotta watch
• 11:13
  out because you tweak too much.
• 11:14
  Now you've taken it off the rails again.
• 11:16
  So obviously we have different phone numbers so that I could test these
• 11:20
  new models and we're not testing it on our live one that we know is working.
• 11:24
  Right.
• 11:24
  But you've gotta constantly be testing because it is getting better and the
• 11:27
  prompts are getting smarter and smarter.
• 11:30
  Bob: I mean, even if you, I mean, if you just do the math and I think.
• 11:33
  The numbers are probably under this, but for a qualified call that's probably
• 11:36
  say 50 cents a minute using AI intake.
• 11:39
  The other ones are a lot more if you have a, you know,
• 11:41
  manpower answering those phones.
• 11:43
  Now that's essentially what, 30 bucks an hour?
• 11:49
  Am I doing math right?
• 11:49
  Like I. If you just have that maxed out, I mean, you're not gonna be able to get
• 11:53
  that quality of service for $30 an hour.
• 11:55
  It'll be less, be less, but like that's, that's phenomenal.
• 11:58
  Eric: And also you have someone trans through your phone.
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:00
  You know, they may, you're paying them per hour.
• 12:02
  Where here you're paying per minute.
• 12:03
  You're only paying when the call is actually happening.
• 12:06
  So, you know, you.
• 12:09
  You're winning there and like I said, you're getting the transcription and
• 12:12
  you're getting the alerts and the hot transfer and the world transfer or
• 12:14
  however you wanna set up the system.
• 12:16
  Bob: Yeah, and here's what I'd recommend for lawyers watching
• 12:18
  or listing is yes, you know, play around with this, set it up.
• 12:20
  It's an easy way for you to not only get cases in your wheelhouse, but be able to
• 12:25
  find those referral networks or people you're currently working with to auto
• 12:28
  push them through this auto posting and be able to track all of those things.
• 12:31
  And there's no reason why you shouldn't have the ability to.
• 12:34
  Say you can help consumers find the best fit for all these practice areas,
• 12:38
  whether it's mass torts or family law or stuff outside your wheelhouse.
• 12:41
  'cause you have a good quality home for it, right?
• 12:43
  That's a service.
• 12:43
  That's something that you can do.
• 12:45
  Um, and then on the other end, if speed, just like you said in the real estate
• 12:48
  game, if somebody's putting a case and you see these pings, these hot, hot cases
• 12:52
  coming through, attorney share, that means that there's usually a consumer that's
• 12:54
  on the line or quickly off the line.
• 12:56
  There's nothing stopping anybody from essentially getting those cases
• 13:00
  broker and you get to see if it's good enough for them or maybe somebody
• 13:02
  else, or giving that person their AI intake number to call to keep the.
• 13:07
  Conversation going till their team can get on the phone to help that consumer
• 13:10
  Eric: e Exactly.
• 13:11
  Yeah.
• 13:11
  Because, you know, a lot of these calls come in after hours.
• 13:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:14
  And when someone searches in the legal niche, obviously the, one of the top
• 13:18
  things showing up in Google is gonna be the Google Maps results, right.
• 13:21
  For your local firms.
• 13:22
  And if someone calls the first firm and, and they don't answer or they go to
• 13:26
  voicemail, most of them are gonna go down to number two and call that second person.
• 13:29
  So now, I mean, you did all this work to rank there, um, and get
• 13:33
  that call, and you've already lost that client because you didn't have
• 13:36
  someone that was able to answer their questions at the time that they called.
• 13:39
  Bob: Do you think it's gonna be easier for good quality lawyers and law firms
• 13:44
  to now compete in this, in this space?
• 13:48
  Eric: I think so, um, obviously there's a lot of changes for
• 13:53
  how a client is finding a firm.
• 13:55
  You know, when you search Google now, I mean the top quarter
• 13:58
  of the page is an AI answer.
• 14:00
  Usually there's a summary there, so there's a lot more.
• 14:03
  Bob: Usually I stop there too.
• 14:04
  It's like, oh, most good.
• 14:05
  Yeah, there's a lot
• 14:05
  Eric: more zero click searches they call it, where basically you search
• 14:08
  and you get the answer right away.
• 14:09
  You don't have to click on a website anymore most of the time.
• 14:12
  Um, so, but obviously Google makes money off their ad, so the ads
• 14:15
  are still appearing above that AI search, depending on most searches.
• 14:18
  Then you'll have the AI summary, and then you'll usually have the local,
• 14:21
  the map pack, um, there, and then the websites are being pushed all the
• 14:25
  way to the bottom of that page, but.
• 14:27
  I don't think websites go away because a lot of that AI data and
• 14:31
  the answers that Google is pulling are coming from those websites.
• 14:35
  So I think firms that are building websites need to change from the
• 14:40
  idea of, Hey, I need to just stuff keywords in here to rank for whatever
• 14:43
  they're trying to rank for, to actually answering the user's question.
• 14:47
  So that they show up at the top.
• 14:49
  For instance, a lot of searches that I track right now, they'll
• 14:53
  give like three or four local firms.
• 14:55
  And so I'm always trying to be in there and I see our conversions on our website.
• 14:59
  A lot of the searches are now starting at chat GPT.
• 15:02
  Wow.
• 15:03
  Really?
• 15:03
  So, yeah.
• 15:03
  So, um, it's a different game
• 15:05
  Bob: and a lot of people are finding their lawyers 'cause they're a brand that
• 15:08
  they don't recognize on social media.
• 15:10
  So if you're watching or listening.
• 15:12
  You should have an AI voice intake number and just have it on your
• 15:15
  profile, like 8, 4, 4, the team, so you're not missing anything.
• 15:19
  Right.
• 15:19
  Right.
• 15:19
  So people know how to contact you.
• 15:21
  You could do it quickly.
• 15:21
  You're never gonna miss the call.
• 15:23
  And even if you cannot help them, you will find the best partner for them.
• 15:26
  Right.
• 15:27
  Oh yeah.
• 15:27
  What a brave new world.
• 15:28
  Yep, man.
• 15:29
  Well, Eric, thanks for coming on the show.
• 15:31
  Um.
• 15:32
  Reach out, you know, reach out the Justice team network.
• 15:34
  If you have questions, reach out to Eric directly.
• 15:36
  You know, I think we, this will likely air June, 2025 or just a week or two
• 15:40
  away from June by the time this airs.
• 15:42
  And I think it's gonna change exponentially and get better, faster,
• 15:44
  stronger, and less expensive as we go.
• 15:46
  Eric: Yeah, it's great.
• 15:46
  It's, it's exciting time.
• 15:48
  Um, and like I said, just keeping up with it, staying ahead of it, and
• 15:52
  providing answers to your clients, it's, it's gonna be amazing for attorneys.
• 15:55
  Cool.
• 15:55
  Bob: Alright.
• 15:56
  Well thanks for watching and listening to this episode, the Justice Team Podcast.
• 15:59
  Take care.
• 16:00
  Thank you.