Center Stage
A podcast featuring interviews with small business owners and industry experts to help you solve the marketing and business development challenges that come with running your own firm.
Center Stage
Fix Your Intake, Grow Your Firm feat. Adam Williams
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📞 Your intake process could be the reason your law firm is losing new clients. Adam Williams joins Center Stage to talk about why law firms need to take a closer look at what happens after someone reaches out. From missed calls and slow follow-up to overwhelmed staff and broken intake systems, Adam explains how firms can stop letting opportunities slip through the cracks and create a better first experience for potential clients.
You can get in touch with Adam here:
https://www.lawfirmvoice.com/
If you want to strategize your firm's marketing, speak with our team:
https://bit.ly/spotlightmarketingbranding
Copyright © 2026. Spotlight Marketing + Branding
What I challenge law firm owners to do is grab someone else's phone and call your office and pretend to be a client and see what that is like. Have a bucket nearby because you will want to vomit at what a great job your staff is doing of scaring people off.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Center Stage Podcast. My name is Danny Decker, co-founder, partner here at Spotlight Marketing and Branding. I'm really excited about our guest today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Adam Williams is a friend. He's an attorney. He's an entrepreneur. Adam, welcome to the show. And let me start with this. How many businesses are are you actively operating these days? Because I'm connected with you on Facebook and I often wonder like how you find time to sleep.
SPEAKER_00That's I uh I just had this happen earlier this week. I we had some money come in and our controller said, What business is this for? Um so yeah, we've got we've got Rust Belt Business Law, our law firm. We've got Pennywise Tax Strategies, uh, and now we've got Firm Voice, which is a new one that we started just a few weeks ago. Uh those are the profitable businesses. Uh, and then I've got a pile of hobbies and unprofitable businesses as as well.
SPEAKER_01Where do you spend, like, where do you spend most of your time like on a week-to-week basis?
SPEAKER_00Uh, that's a good question. So with Pennywise, I am basically our chief marketing officer. So it's my job to generate the leads at Pennywise. Uh, as part of that, and as and as part of working with our law firm, uh, we started looking into voice agents to answer the phone at our businesses, and we built them and they were so cool. I'm like, well, this is a thing that we need to start selling now. So on the firm voice side of things, uh, it's me and one other employee right now. So she's doing most of the implementation and the building, and I've I've got the strategy and the sales and the marketing and the finance and all of the other stuff right now because it's it's in startup mode.
SPEAKER_01So I love it. I love it, man. Well, I want to get into that, but but before we do, um, just just share a little bit about your sort of professional background, if you don't mind. Some of our of our audience probably knows you, but some some don't. And I feel like you have a really fun sort of entrepreneurial story. So just do tell us kind of what brought you to to this point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's fair. I uh I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. My parents owned their own businesses my entire lives, did pretty well with it. And, you know, my dad was one of these guys that worked until 2 a.m. five days a week. Um, I actually brought him into my sixth grade class for entrepreneurship day. And he said, Don't ever get me up this early ever again. Um, so I was raised in this very hardworking, control your own destiny type of family. And the advice for my parents was go get a business degree, go and get a good job, nine to five, retirement contributions, health insurance, security, all the stuff that we never had. Uh, so I did. I went to law school, I got my MBA, and I had a job for 366 days at a big four accounting firm. And I had to stay a year to keep my signing bonus and then started building things on the side. So my law practice started as a side hustle, turned into a uh an Inc. 5000 business. Um, Pennywise was an offshoot of that because we saw a massive opportunity uh with a lot of our clients that were making money, but nobody was doing much to help them keep it. Uh, and then firm voice, same thing. We saw a lot of leaks in businesses, law firms in particular, that uh they're spending all this money on marketing and not keeping any of it. So I think I've I had to change my identity a few years ago because I was a good lawyer for a long, long time and then decided, you know, I'm I'm an entrepreneur. I have my law degree, but um, somewhere in there, we launched a board game years ago. That was kind of a flop. I owned a food truck at one point. So that that the creative aspect and building something new that doesn't exist is something that I really enjoy. So I try and build my job description around that.
SPEAKER_01Love it, man. Very cool. Okay, so so tell us a little bit about Pennywise. I know you you mentioned you launched that a couple of years ago. Um, seems like you guys are doing really cool things there. So what's what's the deal with Pennywise?
SPEAKER_00So uh most business owners, law firm owners, uh, are used to the experience that I call April shock syndrome. Uh they take their papers to their accountant in the first quarter of the year. They make a whole bunch of money, and the accountant says, Congratulations, here's how much you owe. And that's a kick in the teeth every year. Uh, and after several years of that, Jackie and I realized, hey, there's a better way to approach this. Meeting with an accountant throughout the year, looking forward, planning, actually doing things that the tax code allows you to do to reduce your tax bill. Uh so we started that business about three years ago, uh, really taking a whole bunch of our law firm clients and saying, hey, we've got this new thing now. Um, I think, I think we represented something like 300 law firms in our law firm through different things uh and brought them over to this new business. And it's we're now on April 15th, our clients are high-fiving us, which is not the experience that most clients have with their accountants on tax day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, 100%. And man, I I have been there like that, it just sucks. It sucks as as a business owner to have that. We we finally, I think, have have gotten our our tax strategy under control in the last couple of years, but man, it was like five or six Aprils in a row where it's just it's just brutal. It's just it's just kind of the worst. Um, all right. So so our audience primarily solo law firms, uh, penny wise, and and we're gonna transition in a minute, but but on the pennywise side of things, when does it make sense for someone to contact you guys? Do you work with large like large firms exclusively? Like who who should reach out on the pennywise side of things?
SPEAKER_00I I mean it's it's the moment where you start making at the end of the year $100,000, $150,000. That's when you need to start planning. And then I think the biggest firms that we work with are about $25 million single shareholder, which is massive in my book. Um, so yeah, anywhere in that range, our our bread and butter is that law firm owner that's profiting half a million to a million a year. Uh they they've probably crossed $2 million in revenue. And again, they have that that pain and suffering of this sucks. There's got to be a better way. Uh, and and that's what we're here for.
SPEAKER_01All right. So tell me again about how firm voice came to be. I think you said you were you were you were trying to solve a problem in your own business. Just share the story if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_00That was it. I mean, we were we were looking for an AI voice solution for our business, and we did not find anything that we liked. Uh there are places out there that do try to target law firms with this stuff, but having grown two multimillion dollar professional services firms, uh, I think we brought a level of experience to what it takes to actually get a lead and turn it into a scheduled consult that shows up that turns into a client. Um, so we built it. Literally, my receptionist and I helped me build this, which is a great lesson on how to implement AI in your business without firing people. And we built it and we're like, this is actually pretty cool. Um we we launched it on a Friday afternoon, we tested the whole thing, we flipped the switch to turn it on, and we were in the middle of a meeting and we forgot to shut it off. And somebody called and we didn't program it for this, we didn't prepare it for this, but these things are smart enough with enough prompting that some kid calls and he goes, Hey, I'm a junior in college, I'm looking for an internship. And this agent goes, Wow, that's really exciting. Send your resume to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we went, this works. Like this is that that it reacted in a more positive manner and more promptly than a human being would have in that exact same situation. So we put one into our other business and then we said, All right, this is this is a thing that other law firms need. We've built this is the complete opposite of how I've approached anything in my life. Normally, and you entrepreneurs will get this, normally you sell it and then you go and figure out how to build it. I actually built a thing that was really cool. And I'm like, well, now we got to go and sell this because it is, it is just so impressive what these things are capable of when they're programmed effectively, when they're tailored to the individual business, particularly when it's a law firm, because we get different phone calls from a plumber or an electrician or, you know, name your business. All right.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, I I think AI at this point, it's been around long enough that people are starting to push back, right? And and we're starting to hear things like, you know, you know, AI, AI receptionists, really bad. It's a turn off. Um, so but it sounds like you you've built something that is is genuinely helpful to to to callers, which is which is which is pretty great. Like how so so so give us a sense of this thing's capabilities. Because I assume it's more than just like, hello, you've reached Adam Williams, press one to talk to you know the sales team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So here's the funny thing is we as a society have gotten used to listen to the following menu closely because the options have changed. We've adopted that. And then you got to listen, and I count on my fingers to remember which button I'm supposed to press. Or I've been calling my dentist and they say, call us back at this phone number, extension 400. But when I call them, the the answering machine says, press one for this office, two for this office, three for this. I don't know which office it is.
SPEAKER_01Or do you do the thing like because I'm super impatient, it's like as soon as I get that, I'm like pressing zero, pressing nine, 100%. Trying to figure out how to skip it.
SPEAKER_00So that's right now we are in a world where you've got two types of people, two types of callers. One is the people that say, I just want my mat, I want to know that I've called the right place and I've taken the right next step, and these people can help me. And a voice agent can do that more consistently during more hours than any human being can. But then you've got the other group of callers that says, I don't want to pump my own gas, I don't want to do self-checkout, and I want to talk to a human being when I call a law firm. Well, great, you build a system that has that. So when somebody, this thing is super friendly. I actually just got an email from one of our clients that said, I can't believe how much empathy it expressed. It's a freaking computer. But you get those people that say, operator, operator, operator, they won't answer questions. So fine, we transfer them to a friendly, smiling, helpful human being who can help them out. So we're not eliminating receptionists. We're not, we're not firing these people, but we are handling 75 to 90% of our calls without a human being having to get involved. And especially with law firms, I think a lot of these companies that do this market to PI firms because they spend the most on advertising. We're working with an estate planning firm right now, seven offices. Their receptionist is responsible for seating the people in the conference room to sign their wills and their trusts and their estate planning documents. Okay. Very high impact moment for these clients, some of the most important documents that they're ever going to sign. And this woman who seats these custom these clients and says, Can I get your coffee and sit right here? And the attorney will be right in. This woman answers 2,000 phone calls per month, which is a hundred per working day, which is something like one every 12 minutes. So, how does she provide a great client experience for these clients when a new lead is calling, or my favorite one, your Google business listing is about to expire, or some salesman or some garbage call, how does she provide a great client experience for these clients answering 2,000 phone calls a month? She can't do it. So we've now relieved her of that burden. We actually have a bet going on in our office right now of the 2,000, what are we going to get the number down to for her? I said 500, but Rebecca, who's helping me build this stuff, thinks 100 phone calls is what this woman's actually gonna have to answer now, which is crazy. Because now she can go be a human being and she can have relationships with these clients and she can do these things that improve the business and bring in more referrals and lead to happier clients.
SPEAKER_01So it's I love that, man. Well, and and as as as a marketing firm, right? Obviously, intake is super important to us. And and you know, one of the things that we do for the law firms that we work with is generate leads, and sometimes that looks like phone calls, and sometimes that looks like you know, downloading a lead magnet from a website or a landing page. And and one of the things that that we I don't want to say struggle with, but is is is just a massive challenge, is a lot of the firms we work with are are smaller firms, and so they struggle to get back to phone, they struggle to return phone calls, they struggle to get back to to leads that come in. And you know, the conversation we have kind of over and over is listen, if if you're investing time and money and you're hiring us and we're putting resources into this to generate leads to grow your law firm. I mean, it's like to use a football analogy, it's like getting the ball to the one yard line and then and then fumbling it right before you punch it into the end zone. Because if you're not managing the leads properly, you're just man, like the stats are crazy. I'm sure you've seen them. Like the the your likelihood of of converting a lead into a paying client if you get back to them within five minutes versus if you wait even 60 minutes, it like cuts in half. And if you wait 24 hours, you fall off a cliff. Yep. And so, but but man, we preach this until we're blue in the face. And so I guess I want to step back and ask this question like, why do you think that attorneys in small firms struggle so much with this?
SPEAKER_00Uh especially in small firms, we're focused on practicing law. We're not trained on how to make someone feel comfortable, how to how to remind them to congratulate them and give them confidence that they've actually called the right place that can handle their problem, which for lawyers is often one of the most important issues that someone ever has to deal with in their life. We're not trained on that. We're trained on I just got out of court, the opposing counsel was a total jerk to me, my client doesn't understand exactly what just happened, so I have to explain it. And oh, there's three pieces of paper sitting on my desk for leads that I have to call back. Versus the attorney that walks out of court, looks at their calendar and says, Oh, I've got an intake call scheduled today at four o'clock. This client has already received information about our firm, and I'm gonna meet them, whatever, in person, on the phone, over Zoom, and I can focus on them at that moment. We just don't think about that stuff. Um, now as firms grow and we start to treat them more as a business and we understand how vitally important that receptionist role is and how the intake process works and the sales process works, we start to put a little more thought into it. But many of us are not thinking about early in the client journey. We're thinking about how do I get this client the best possible result. Well, it turns out getting them the best possible result starts at the beginning and making sure they actually hire your firm. Uh, I'm probably gonna steal your football analogy because I've been saying it's like going to your personal trainer and then hopping in your car and going to Burger King, right? Like you got one part down great, the fitness part, but the or the exercise part, but the diet piece is lacking. Your marketing can be rock solid. You can generate more leads than you could ever handle. And then it turns out you don't actually handle them.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, exactly. Well, and and so you you touched on something that's interesting to me too, right? Because again, a lot of our clients are smaller firms, right? We don't tend to work with super large PI firms. We do work with the estate planning firms and the business attorneys and immigration and family law. And and a lot of times when we're having conversations about how is intake handled, like how are new leads handled, oftentimes it is a part of somebody's job description, right? So there's an office manager or there's a receptionist or sometimes a paralegal who part of what they do is respond to leads. And and that that is always a red flag for me because like that's the least fun part of most people's job, right? Like, would you rather do what you just said, right? Would you rather be seating clients and and bringing them coffee and getting them excited and being there for this really important moment in their life? Or would you rather answer the phone or make a call back for somebody that 99% they're not even, you know, you know, they're not even somebody you want to talk to, right? And it's like it's human nature to like ignore and and and put put getting back to leads on the on the very bottom of your to-do list, but then the the net result of that is they're not following up with their leads. And and that's just a huge problem. So I'm I'm a big advocate that like, you know, as soon as possible, you know, it needs to be somebody's full-time job to do that. Otherwise, it's just gonna get dropped to the bottom of the list. Do you see that any differently?
SPEAKER_00Uh, there's a hard truth there, that unless you're the owner of the business or unless you're a commissioned salesperson, more leads and more clients are problematic to you because that means more work. So, so if you have the choice between doing work that you already have or calling this person back to bring in more work, you're just gonna focus on the work that you already have, unless you're a salesperson or unless you're the owner of the firm whose livelihood depends on that, right? So, yeah, that's a that's a hard truth. I what I challenge law firm owners to do is grab someone else's phone and call your office and pretend to be a client and see what that is like. Have a bucket nearby because you will want to vomit at what a great job your staff is doing of scaring people off. And they're not bad people and they're doing the best they can, but because they're not trained and there's not a system and they're busy and they're distracted, and while they're answering the phone, the UPS guy's coming in and the coffee place is coming to clean your coffee maker, right? They've got, they're just pulled in too many directions to focus on this one thing that's so vitally important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes so much sense. So, okay, so so how does firm voice sort of integrate into this? Because it it sounds like you're not replacing receptionists. Maybe it's sort of like I'm picturing it sort of like the front line. Is that is that is that accurate?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's really gonna depend on the the complexity of the firm's intake system, which is part of the reason that we only work with law firms. We understand that, but every law firm is a little bit different. So is it a paid consultation with an attorney? Is it some sort of intake uh call with someone else on the team? Is there a non-attorny salesperson? So depending on what it is, we we build it for what that for firm has or what they want to have. So it can, it's so impressive. It can pre-qualify. Are they calling about our practice area? Are they calling in our geographic area? And is this something that we can actually help with? If so, it can schedule, it can take a payment and schedule somebody, can it schedule with whoever you want, or it can just say, great, we'll have we'll have a human being call you back. Or like for the for the quick the family law, the criminal defense, the personal injury, it can transfer you immediately to an intake person who can then focus just on that intake and dealing with that potential client and not the phone ringing seven other times while they're on that call. So they're they're quite customized, uh, which is problematic for our profits, but very good for us because they're just so darn good at what they do. Um, I actually just got an email this morning from a client that said, uh I told you she was amazed at how much empathy this thing had. And it's like, that's not necessary in every firm, but in this particular type of firm, yeah, it you want to have it express some empathy. So that's the point. I think the other part of it is though, because this is an unexamined piece of most law firms, we bring a lot of experience both from our own businesses and the clients that we work with of, hey, here's what we've seen in other firms that works really well. Why don't you try this in your firm? And a lot of people are open to those ideas because they know their system isn't perfect and they're they're grateful for any help that they can get on it. So I think that's the other area where we add a lot of value of, hey, you're when somebody fills out your contact us form on your website and you send them a 17-page questionnaire to fill out before they meet with anybody, that's probably scaring a lot of people off, right? So, how can we improve this? And I know you guys focus on that too, with with the way that you send out the lead magnets and the information that you ask for. So I think it's just really important to have all of those pieces working together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So one of the things that that caught my eye, uh, because again, I think we're connected on Facebook or Instagram or somewhere, was I think you mentioned something about actually sort of handling lead magnets or or maybe maybe it was like it was like offering a lead magnet when people call. But but tell me a little bit about that, because again, as as you know, we're huge fans at Spotlight, we're huge fans of lead magnet strategies for law firms. We love to use like Facebook ads, Instagram ads to to drive traffic to lead magnets, right? And and I know you know this, but something like you know, 80 to 90 percent of traffic that hits a law firm's homepage, they're not actually quite ready to to schedule a consultation. They're still researching, they're thinking, they're learning. And so lead magnets really fill this like super valuable space in a law firm marketing funnel. So talk to me a little bit about what firm voice, how how that interacts with with lead magnets, if at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't I don't need to sell your audience on the value of lead magnets. But what we found was there were a lot of people calling our firm that just they just wanted more information. They wanted to ask some questions, they wanted to see if we could help, but they weren't quite ready to take the next step of scheduling something. So with some of these, we now have it saying, Well, can I send you some more information? And somebody says, Well, sure, because that's exactly what they want, there's more information. And you can make it really compelling. Oh, we can send you our seven hacks to blah, blah, blah, or I can just send you some more information. I don't think we've had anyone yet say no to that request. So if they don't schedule, it says, You want some more information? Yep, great. Can I get your email address? Game on, right? We deliver the lead magnet, we've now captured their email address and their phone number because they called us, and we can now follow up with them and nurture that relationship. So it's just another way to capture their contact information in exchange for the value that you provide.
SPEAKER_01So are you integrating in with their CRM to do that, or have you built like a custom?
SPEAKER_00So we yeah, we basically got our own. Uh, it's it's a high level wrap, right? No, no secrets there. So if a firm uses high level right now, great, we integrate with that. If not, we basically will take it to the point where the consult gets scheduled and then it's now in your system. And with technology the way it is, it's easy. To ship that stuff over. So we get all the data on all the leads and all the clients that call in through the system. And yeah, we can integrate that with whatever you have. Or for a firm that doesn't have a CRM, we can actually help start getting that in place. Your clients are going to have something that helps deliver that lead magnet and have a system in place. We try as much as possible not to disrupt the systems that you already have if they're working. So let's work with what you have instead of replacing it. Because the last thing we need is more software that we don't use all the full capabilities of.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. All right. This is great, Adam. So okay, so so what's the right time for a law firm to consider firm voice? How do they get started?
SPEAKER_00So I think the best answer is if you're spending money on marketing, it's the best time to look at it. Because the solution is better than what you have right now if you've got a human being answered the phone, if they're not 24-7, right? This can handle overflow and after hours and things like that. So if you're spending money, it's the time to look at it because it's also cheaper than hiring a human being. Now, I want to make abundantly clear, we're not replacing the human beings. They're now the backstop to the system. So if you're if you're a solo with an assistant, that person can still help with the number of calls that they need help with. So yeah, I say as soon as you're spending money on advertising, now we also have also had some other firms that they've been around long enough and all of their leads come from referrals. This is still a really valuable tool because when that attorney goes to court or on vacation and someone needs to handle those calls, that can happen. So it I the reality is it's such a low price point that I think everybody should consider it because again, you you put all this work into doing a good job and treating your clients well, and that leads to more referrals and more leads. So let's make sure that those are captured properly.
SPEAKER_01And where where uh where does somebody sign up or get started?
SPEAKER_00So I I wish I memorized the phone number because I could tell people to call and see how this thing works. So if you go to lawfirmvoice.com, that's got our lead magnet. And it'll it'll it's our guide on how to mystery shop your firm. It's literally, what do you say? How do you score your person? How do they how do they rate? Uh and if it's if it comes off to you as a great client experience, maybe you don't need a new system. We haven't had that experience yet. Usually it's, man, that that didn't go how I wanted, so I better fix that.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, I pulled up the home page and the number is 814-228-5800. So you're saying just give that a call and see what happens? 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Sweet. All right. Adam, this was great. Appreciate you coming on here. Um, you know, I'm gonna say just kind of one more time for for everyone listening here. Um you need some sort of solution like this. I'm not getting in any any sort of affiliate kickback or anything like that. I can just tell you from working with hundreds and hundreds of law firms, you know, if you want to grow your business and you are investing in in marketing, you just gotta have you gotta have a solution in place to get back to leads quickly. Other otherwise, you are just fumbling the ball at the goal line and and everybody ends up frustrating. Your marketing partner ends up frustrated, you end up frustrated. So, Adam, really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your expertise. And uh, and just thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it.