Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
11 Client Communication Hacks | Gyi Tsakalakis & Jared Jaskot
Picture a new client on day 17. They signed last week. Their neck still hurts. Their inbox is quiet. The silence makes the story in their head louder. Did the firm forget me?
That moment is where this episode lives. From the first call through the first 30 days and beyond, Brian Glass sits with Gyi Tsakalakis and Abogado Jared Jaskot to map a simple system for better client communication and steadier client engagement. They show how to set client expectations on day one, why a real voice every 30 days calms anxiety, and how a welcome kit or closeout letter can anchor the relationship. You will hear where digital tools help and where they don’t. Chatbot for intake, sure. Automation for reminders and scheduling, yes. But the real wins come from mixing law firm technology with a human check-in that proves you are working the file.
If you care about legal marketing that feels like service, legal practice management that your team can keep, and a client experience that earns five-star reviews, this is your playbook. We cover using SMS over email when it fits, capturing preferences early, routing DMs back into your system, and building evergreen videos that answer common questions without repeating yourself. Keywords you will hear throughout: client communication, client expectations, digital tools, chatbot, automation, and the habits that make a modern practice run.
Recorded at Kaleidoscope 2025 by 8AM (formerly, Affinipay) with Brian, Gyi, and Jared.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Hello, my friends, and welcome into another exciting episode of Life Beyond the Bruce, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own design and build the kind of practices they like showing up to on Mondays. The number one cause of bar complaints for lawyers is not being a bad lawyer. The number one cause of legal malpractice inquiries is not screwing up a case. In both cases, it's poor attorney client communication. And in today's episode, I'm rehashing the panel that I was on with Geese Akkalakis and Apogato Jared Jascott down in Austin, Texas at the 8 a.m. I think this is back in early September, maybe at the end of August. Listeners of Legal Podcast, Law Firm Growth Podcasts, of course know who Geeks Alkalakis is, runs a web company called AttorneyStink, is also the host of One Tower Legal Marketing. You may not know if you are not on Spanish-speaking immigration TikTok. He's a lawyer in Baltimore, Maryland, serving the Hispanic population there in immigration cases. And the three of us sat down at Kaleidoscope to talk about client communication. So we dive deep into number one, how do you communicate with clients before their cases while we're signing them up during their cases? What happens if you lose track of a client, which is sometimes happens in Jared's case. And how we use all phases of the client lifecycle to create proper expectations for our clients, to manage those expectations, and to earn more five-star reviews for our law firms. What's the most interesting to me about Analytics is how much lawyers or how little lawyers know about each other's practice areas. So you'll hear throughout the course of this discussion like I think Jared's got it really hard to do a crazy lawyer. Um and I think sometimes personal literary lawyers take for granted the assumptions that people come in with about our business, and frankly, sometimes how easy what we do is. So without further ado, the Kaleidoscope panel.
SPEAKER_02:Hi everybody, thanks for joining us today. Uh, I'm Geese Akalakis. I run a digital marketing agency called AttorneySync. Uh so I'm just a lowly lowly consultant. My panelists here are the uh practicing lawyers, and so uh they're gonna share some real world experience. I'm gonna share some of the things that we've seen with some of our clients. Um we prefer that if you have specific questions, we would love to make this a conversation, answer your specific questions. Um, and so feel free to interrupt if something doesn't make sense. I'll let my great panelists here introduce themselves.
SPEAKER_01:My name is Jared Jascott. Uh, I'm an immigration lawyer. I also started a chatbot company called YotangoBot in 2016 to try to talk to customers about their cases.
SPEAKER_00:My name is Brian Glass. I have a personal injury practice in Northern Virginia.
SPEAKER_02:So I kind of want I like to frame this conversation thinking about a couple things before we even get into like the brass tacks of like technology and stuff. And the first thing, and we were talking about this in preparation for our conversation today, is you really got to think about like what you want your firm to be, what you want your practice to be. I mean, how you communicate with clients is so essential to all of the different functions in your firm, of course. It touches marketing, it touches uh operations. Um, and so there we're gonna talk about there's a lot of different ways to do this, you know, and you many of you are probably doing uh communicating with clients and potential clients in a variety of different ways. And so there's not really one right way to do this. And so I want you to keep that in the back of your head, though, as uh they share uh some of their uh systems and processes and tools, uh, that there's not just a one-answer solution. You know, on one hand, I think everybody would agree that in an ideal world, and most of your clients would love to have you on demand at all times of day, uh, answering their questions uh and showing and showing empathy and helping them deal with all the life legal issues that they have in their lives, but that's not realistic uh from you know the standpoint of actually practicing. On the other end of the spectrum, you'd probably love to, in many contexts, never have to talk to clients, uh just you know, focus on working their cases. Uh and so uh a combination of setting expectations, communications, policies, and procedures and technology uh somewhere in the middle and finding that right mix is really what this is all about. So, Jared, why don't you just kind of start and walk us through uh how you start with the expectations that you set with communicating with clients at the outset of meeting them?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean I think immigration is a big challenge sometimes because cases can last like eight to ten years. And so sometimes I think I would say the the problem we're dealing with right now is that we have some of these cases that are just pending for a really long time. And what we're trying to do is get onto a cycle with people that are in that category. We're just reach out to tell them that we're still thinking about them and that these are the trends in their case type. Otherwise, what I'm seeing a lot is that they come back and you haven't talked to me in a while, even though you know we haven't, nothing's happened effectively. But I think trying to get into that cadence of sending people in those different pools of regular communication that's not even tailored to them necessarily.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, do and do you set an expectation with them as you kind of segment like which bucket they fall in? Like you do say to them, like, you can expect to hear from us on this frequency and in these ways?
SPEAKER_01:I should. I don't. I think I mean the other big thing for us in those is that we're actually, I think one of the big points of clarity is when we finish their specific task to give them a closeout letter in that very moment because I see so much tension with our clients when we don't do a good job of telling them, okay, we're our engagement is now over, your case is pending, we'll communicate with you, but I don't want to make any promises. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Brian, uh different practice, PI talk to us about how you start to have those conversations at the start.
SPEAKER_00:So we start that right in our sales process. Um, and I I have scripted, uh, and it should be happening in every one of our sales calls, that we're gonna do three things for you. We're gonna find all the money that's available to you from every insurance policy, we're gonna help you hold as much of it as possible, and we're gonna make it drop dead stupid simple for you. Meaning, I'm gonna go get all the medical bills, the records, the police report, all of the things, by the way, which every law firm does, right? But highlighting these are the things we're gonna do. And your only job is to go to medical care and talk to us about where you're going. And even if you forget to do that, we're gonna call you every 30 days. Your expectation should be you hear from us once every 30 days. Update or not in the case, because we want to be connected with you. Because one of the things that you said is like when the clients uh don't hear from you, they assume that you've forgotten about them, right? And they assume almost always assume malintent. The lawyer doesn't like me, the lawyer doesn't want to work on my case anymore, right? And so even when you have no updating cases, and it happens that six months go by and nothing really has changed, just picking up the phone and calling them and telling them uh there's no update, but that's the update, right? And one of the rules that we have in our office is it's every 30 days, it's a conversation with the client. It's not a text, it's not an email, it's not I left him a message, like you have to connect with the client. And then that feeds back into relationship building and future referrals and all of those things.
SPEAKER_02:And and by the way, uh these guys are very generous with sharing uh things that they do with their practices online. In fact, you just made me think of your post on LinkedIn because you were talking about uh how it's gotta be a phone call. It's probably, yeah. Yeah. And um but and so when you're when when and maybe this is a little bit pre-client, but someone calls each of you, right? Uh how does that first intake happen before they even become a client? Is that typically a call? Are you do you receive a lot of texts? How are people engaging at the outset with your practices?
SPEAKER_00:So um by all means, right? So listen, lawyers think that clients engage with us and hire us for the same reasons that we would hire a lawyer. And they don't always want to communicate with you the way that you want to communicate, right? Some want to call, some want to fill out a form, some want to text with a chat bot on your website. And so for us, like it's it's how many avenues can we open up for you to engage with us? But I know, because I have the data, that you are way more likely to actually hire me if you speak with somebody in my office the first time, if that's the first point of contact, versus you call their after hours answering service or you fill that a form or whatever. So my preference is to drive somebody towards a phone call. And you know post-COVID, this has changed for me. I used to think if somebody wouldn't take the time and come and sit down with me in my office, spend 45 minutes with me going over the basics of Virginia personal injury law, there's no way they were gonna hire me. There's no way they were gonna listen to me. I talked to less than 5% of all of our new clients before they sign a retainer now. And most of our sales calls are less than 30 minutes. It's it we offered Zoom for a while in in COVID and nobody really wanted it. Maybe it's my area, maybe there's you know, we have a lot of um defense contractors and lawyers and and people who are on Zoom all day, every day, anyway. But my clientele just doesn't want that. So most people to answer your question, uh most people are coming in through an inbound phone call. Jared?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's such a different sale, right? It's such a because you know, as a personal injury attorney, you know, if you've got a phone, you've got a lawyer, is the is you know, that's a simpler sort of but whereas mine, we've got two huge obstacles. Number one, you want help. Okay, great, you know, but is can I help? Is there anyone that can help you? Because in a lot of immigrants' cases, there's literally no solution. And then two, is it a case type that we take, which may not be the case? And then we're gonna make you prepay a consultation. And that's a big friction point, especially when most people that come into my firm at this point, if they're you know, still high number, probably 30 to 40 percent of former client referral, which is great, but you can't grow practice on that in a fast way. So the rest are coming from TikTok for me. And so going from, oh, I saw him on TikTok, he was entertaining, or I liked what he said to I'm gonna give him$150 is big friction. So typically that involves actually like a cycle, right? So we go for a we try to usually go for a DM on TikTok or uh WhatsApp or SMS, and then we start a conversation with them and start nurturing. I'm upset, I believe messaging, I do love phone, but messaging is really good because especially if you're in WhatsApp, SMS, they look at that all the time for their friends, they want to see those messages. If they're in your website chat and they surf away, they're gone. But if you're in their phone where they're having conversations with mom, wife, friends, you know, you've got that chance to keep engaging with them there. So that's what I'm really looking for is to try to get them into a messaging app.
SPEAKER_00:Good for you. That sounds really hard. And and you can you can blame the injury lawyers for setting up the idea that everybody should give a free consultation. Yeah, right. And one of the great things about my practice area is I never have to convince anybody to write me a check. Right. Your process that sounds really hard. Yeah, it's much harder. How do you uh and I hear you saying you do it all in inside of a WhatsApp? You don't have a lead management software where where those people are uh communicating where you know somebody somebody else can pick up the lead and start communicating with them.
SPEAKER_01:We do, we do. So we I mean WhatsApp on the client's phone. On ours, it's in a CRM. Um, and then there's a bot talking to the person. So, you know, they see an ad or a piece of organic content on TikTok or Instagram, and then they come in and start messaging, and then a bot typically engages them. And we just see can the bot the my my dream is that a chat bot can sell a hundred and fifty dollar consultation, but I have seen it happen very rarely. Usually they need to talk to somebody, but um so they go there and then the bot talks to them, and then if they qualify there, then a human picks up the phone and calls them. Outbound call where we got their number after the chat. It is hard. That sounds hard, and it's so much less profitable than PI. I don't even know why I do it.
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk about how uh right at that point, so uh they've called uh or they've messaged you, however, they're coming in. Um, how are you handling uh getting them retained? Are they are you automatically that's part of the experience as well? Is you know, do they need to come? I mean, presumably, because you're working with clients in immigration practice all over the place, they don't need to come to an office or anything. Uh how are you delivering the retainer agreement? And then uh, you know, are you doing that digitally? And and what are the specific tools you're using for that?
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, my clients, oddly, they a lot of them don't have email. They've never had an email account. Sometimes we gotta make them get an email for certain tasks they have to do, but I don't want to make someone get email to retain me. So it's almost always going out through SMS. Uh there's a product called uh VineSign. And we don't have File Vine. I don't know why we got VineSign. I think it was because they were good at SMS. Uh DocuSign now has an SMS as well, but for us, the gold standard is really about getting that retainer to somebody's phone. And a lot of my clients don't have a computer. That smart device, that phone is their only device, so it's gotta come in through SMS for us.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, Brian? Ours are delivered um through lead docket, either by SMS or by uh or by email, usually by both, right? Um and it and I ask you, you want me to email it or text it to you? I don't actually don't care what the answer is because I'm gonna send it to you both ways. Um uh but it comes through that way. And then our our process geek, uh I have an intake and sales um one-person team who uh has what we call our deal box. Here's the cases that we will take, right? Clear liability within the statute of limitations, has had some medical care already, doesn't have a lawyer. And we we there's a little bit of definition around what the medical care is. Um and 80% of the time she's able to make that decision without talking to us. And then 20% of the time it's like, hey, here's a case I don't think we should take and here's why, or here's a case that maybe you would take. Like, do you want to talk to this person and figure out is it somebody we can help or not?
SPEAKER_02:Got it. Uh show of hands, judgment-free zone, just out of curiosity, how many folks are actually interacting with clients through a messaging app outside of email? Okay. And I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, the this is where the expectations are of people, right? Uh whether they just don't have a computer, uh, you know, obviously they don't want to do people are busy and they've got their own lives to lead. Um, and you know, you think about it for ourselves. Like we use text messages as well for so many contexts. So that's great. I think that that um in terms of adoption. Let's talk about uh first 30 days and maybe in six months. Uh what does the communication cadence typically look like uh when you're trying to, you know, you've got them signed up now. Um are there any is there any automated messaging that goes out? Are there any kind of um educational materials that go out? Uh what is the what are the first 30 days of uh representation look like?
SPEAKER_00:We got a big flurry of stuff that happens, right? Because when it all happens digitally, when somebody clicks your retainer agreement to sign, there's kind of a letdown, right? We have all these sales processes and we're calling and we're texting, we're emailing, and oh, we can help you with the case, and here's the thing. And then nothing happens, at least from the client's perspective. So we have a physical box that goes out to them with instructions on, you know, with all the stuff that we used to give them, by the way, pre-signing. Like here's the 101 on Virginia injury law, here's how to be a good client, here's how to give a good deposition, and then a couple of touchpoint, soft touch point stuff for us. So we have uh my dad's Ben, we have a Benji Bear that has a t-shirt on it. Uh it's like a get well, and it all the stuff goes in a box, and that gets handled, that gets delivered with a handwritten note that's signed by the whole team.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry to interrupt you, all that 101 education material, that's physical material that goes out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's like um the it's called Five Deadly Sins That Wreck Your Auto Accident Case, right? All the stuff that I don't want my clients to do. This is stuff, by the way, that that we used to educate on um when we were sitting in a meeting, like, hey, don't post stupid stuff on social media, right? Uh if you go skydiving, let's keep that picture off the internet. Um all of that stuff is now in a book and that goes that gets delivered. Uh we utilize HONA, which is the case pair uh case status um competitor. That is a push notification that goes out to clients that's tied to their case statuses, and it has um videos of me educating on what's going to happen next in this uh status, and then it's got frequently asked questions all along. The other thing that has to happen within the first 48 hours is a paralegal calls them to get any of the information we didn't get on the initial intake. So it's a big big flurry of stuff. Again, because silence breeds this idea that nothing has happened on my case.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, and I think you guys do a great job of this, like um there's this balance between digital and physical. And and those physical assets, like they're tangible. Uh it just there, I think there's you know something psychologically about getting that versus getting that in just an email or just a PDF or just even a text message. So uh that's something to think about. And and a lot of this stuff, too, if you're not doing it, you know, test into it, right? You don't have to send it every single time, but like ask. That's another thing, too, is it's part of this process. And Brian mentioned this in terms of reducing the friction. Like, how would you prefer we do this thing? How would you prefer to receive communications from us? How would you prefer uh that we you know contact you? Uh what works best for you? And of course, you know, guide them and lead them to the the solutions that are uh most effective for your practice. But uh so much of this is about just asking and empathizing with the client and trying to make their life easier, not just like, hey, uh I only you can only call me, leave a voice message uh if you don't get a hold of me. Like just think about that from the experience side. I mean, so many of these issues that we see, whether it's uh negative reviews online or grievances filed, can be resolved through just asking those questions, providing options, reducing the friction, uh, and sending materials to them uh early and often in the uh relationship. Jared, how about you? First 30 days, what's it look like?
SPEAKER_01:For us, it's really more about like trying to do legal work for them right after they give us money, because I think that that really makes people feel like we're working. So as soon as they pay us and sign the retainer, we try to set them in for what we call it a long interview, which is the intake with the paralegal and the attorney. And in that, we give them the we have already given them off in the list of documents right after they retain that we need, but they come in, we review all them, we get their full story, and then in that moment we explain to them exactly what it's gonna look like in their particular case. So it's really about like giving them the max session very quickly after they pay us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. One of the things that we found has been very effective for a lot of our law firm clients is where you have like um, call it evergreen content education materials that you can deliver. And you so you, you know, maybe it's a video, right? You record once and say, hey, this is where you are, this is what you can expect. A lot of that can be automated based on date-based triggers from the retainer being signed up, depending on what kind of technology you're using. And again, so much of it is like, you know, to Brian's point, um, making people feel like, hey, we're here, we're working on your case, reminding them to do that. And we found that those uh the the evergreen videos are really great way because you don't have to record one every single time. You can record once and say, hey, you're at this stage of the representation, here's what you can expect, here's what's going on. Uh, you can do that for deposition prep, you can do that for you know, pre-if you have uh personal injury pre-litigation. Uh you know, as you start to get uh dates and stuff, a lot of these date-based triggers in CRMs can fire these emails, or uh if you're using a messaging app or whatever you're using, uh to give them a video. And we've also found that video from an experience standpoint is much more powerful than just um you know written uh words. So, and again, some people won't want that. They'll prefer just so they'll say to you, and I just prefer to receive text messages, that's great. Uh, but where you can uh, you know, on your side of the equation, where you can create content that uh you know shows that you're working, is you don't have to record it every single time, is really increases the efficiency side of the house and not having to record uh all the you know every uh couple every time a client comes in, right? To be a custom uh experience. So um okay, so we've we've sent them out the initial, it's the first 30 days. Now, you know, as we've mentioned, your clients is many, many years. What is a typical cadence? Is there a typical cadence of communication, or you do you have something that's set to say, hey, we need to check in with this client um at regular intervals, or is it more as needed?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the cases are so different. I mean, I think that that's a big part of it. Um one thing that's kind of I don't know if this is I'm not sure, but I'm kind of thinking about is that the other day I was talking to a client about her case, and she said, Oh, I was happy you already answered my question because you made a video about it last week. And so I think that you can talk to clients, your clients follow you on social media and you make content about their case type and their situation, kind of using that persona model. Like, here's this client and this step, and you make a video and put and put it out, they feel like you were speaking to them and they're happy and they understand that you're thinking about them and their case type. So what you make and push out generally can really send nice signals and communication to your clients.
SPEAKER_02:No, I think that that's amazing. Um, and again, I think when they're when you're connected socially like that, it's a that's an additional touch point of relationship that you have with clients that I think a lot of lawyers don't take advantage of. Uh Brian, how about you? Uh regular cadence after the first 30 years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's every 30 days.
SPEAKER_02:Every 30 phone call, every 30.
SPEAKER_00:Phone call, connection point, every every 30 days. Um, you know, there's not a lot of legal work that goes on in the car crash world in the early stages, right? And so I can't have that flurry of actual legal activity outside of getting the police report. That's that's administrative. On that, that point that you made, though, about um messaging to your clients through social media. I mean, I I think it cuts both ways, right? Because I see lawyers post this, oh, my client won$75,000, right? And they have the big check and he wasn't even hurt, and here's a picture of the car and it has scratches on it, right? But then you have the client who actually was hurt and has a policy, a low policy limits case, and they only won$30,000. And they're like, how come that guy got$75? So you just have to be a little bit cognizant of they are those one-way communications, your clients are seeing that and then using that as a point of comparison for what's going on in my case, right? Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:I I just think I think that's a great point. But and I think that lawyers do get so obsessed with trying to put the trophies on the wall on social media with the wins. But what I find that people resonate with, it doesn't actually have to be. I mean, the wins are nice, but you can also talk to them about like, oh, this middle stage where it's, you know, the everybody's having a hard time. This is the fear that people have going into court. I often personally express like, I'm scared to go to court with my client. I'm scared there's gonna be an ice agent out there. And that resonates with them too. So it doesn't have to, I think as lawyers, we're just so, oh, I only want to post my wins, but you can post just all the things that are happening and talk about it honestly. And people, people are okay with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh, for sure. I mean, that's it's branding and and personal brand, 100%.
SPEAKER_02:I think the other thing that's uh so important in uh, you know, as you're developing this relationship and communicating is also setting expectations. I mean, in many contexts, they have clients have no idea what to expect. They don't know if my case is$10 million or$100,000. They don't know what my chances are of um, you know, dealing with whatever immigration issue they're dealing with. And so having those conversations and expect setting expectations about, you know, hey, I'm gonna be honest with you, you know, we don't know what the outcome. Here are here are a bunch of possible outcomes that can happen, uh, but you really need to manage those expectations. And again, so much of that is through this communication uh process because if you're just silent about it, that's how they start in their heads, they start seeing stuff online, seeing what other lawyers are saying, and then they're gonna uh start contacting. Okay, so we've talked a lot about expectation setting and the um you're leading the relationship at the beginning. Uh, what are some policies and processes around when they message you, right? Because that's out of your control. They can call you anytime they want. Do you how do you talk to them about your availability or their ability to talk to somebody uh at your practice when they want to?
SPEAKER_00:Um so it's funny because I was I was looking for this and I uh so I Googled Ben Glass Law communication policy, and Gemini told me what my communication policy was, and it got it right. That's good. Because we so this is on a we mail a monthly newsletter that goes out to our clients, and on the um in one of the segments of the monthly newsletters or reminding them about our communication policy, which is all phone calls get responded to within 24 hours by somebody. All inbound phone calls to a lawyer or senior staff member have to be scheduled. So I don't take unanticipated inbound phone calls from clients. Um and you can expect to hear from us every 30 days. And there's a couple of other things. And if you if you Google it, Google will tell you exactly what my policy is. So but here's the thing, most clients don't read that stuff, right? So they need to be ref r reminded of it by somebody who's friendly at the front desk. It's like it's all the things that you put in your form documents and in your retainer room that the other client didn't actually read. Um so and there's communication around that too. It's like, hey, Brian can't pick up the phone and talk to you every time that you're calling about your case because he's working on somebody else's and you wouldn't want him interrupting your case for a phone call from Susie. And so we're gonna give him give Susie the same respect when he's working on her case, right? But I'm gonna set up this phone call with you for tomorrow so he has the ability to look over everything that he needs to. And if you think there's anything else that he needs to see, like email me and I'll get it in the notes for the calendar appointment. So all that can be handled by somebody proactively, either at the front desk or by a by a paralegal. I see, and and it you don't really see this with um plaintiff's lawyers, but I see like defense lawyers, uh, insurance defense lawyers have direct dials on their website, which I don't know and they pick it up. Like, how do you do any work? Um and so all of that is is communicating and messaging to the client about what it is that you can expect from us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:And and every once in a while, like somebody violates it, right? And and you just have to be bold about you are not the best client for my practice. And if what your expectation is is that every I'm gonna pick up the phone every time you call and give you an update every three days, it's harder to do in a bigger case with a big policy limit, right? Um but you just have to be bold about like this is not the way that I want to run my law firm and live my life, and just let those clients go because there's somebody for whom that would be the perfect client.
SPEAKER_02:How about you, Jared?
SPEAKER_00:Access?
SPEAKER_01:24-hour rule as well, though not on the weekend.
SPEAKER_00:I thought you were gonna say 24-7 access.
SPEAKER_01:No, I I honestly I'll be honest here is that since I've started doing the detained work again this year for clients, a lot of them end up getting my phone number. Um, especially because if people are moving around in immigration detention, they're being put from one place to the next, you know, it's hard to understand when the client is gonna be able to call me. And so it my phone has kind of turned into a little bit of a nightmare for me. Um I started charging by the hour for the people that have my cell phone number, and that does kind of cut it down a little bit. You gotta bring those incentives in line, and then we'll we'll charge clients for a consult for questions that are kind of if a staff member answers their question and they're like, No, I'm standing on business, I gotta talk to Jared personally, we'll charge a consult fee. Now it makes them so mad. And I I really I don't actually feel like I have a great answer on it because we kind of will charge a consult fee. Sometimes they're so mad that we don't charge a consult fee. Sometimes they'll give us a one-star rating on Google for charging the consult fee and they don't pay it. So it's a tough situation, but people are so mad anyway, and they're not mad at us, but we're the ones that answer the phone. You know, the ice isn't answering their phone, so we're getting a lot of rage right now.
SPEAKER_02:Totally, that's tough. And uh, would you say that the when someone does contact you directly is mostly text messages or phone calls or a little bit of everything?
SPEAKER_01:A lot of if they text me, and they do text me a lot, and sometimes then it's I mean, I don't, I'm so I'm a bit ashamed, but a lot of people have my cell phone number. So now they text, they give it to their friend who texts me, but then I just I just quickly pass it on to the intake team. And they're already texting and and WhatsApping all these people, so I just write them, hey, somebody's gonna call you right now. And it's it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I think it's such a uh it's such a great uh this is such a great juxtaposition because again, as we was trying to say at the outset, you know, it's about designing the practice that you want and the life that you want. And um some firms are gonna, they're you're just gonna be, it might be a competitive advantage. Communication might be a competitive advantage that you have in your market because you allow more access. On the other side of the coin, though, if you're trying to scale and your goal is to do a volume-based practice, you better find ways to efficiently uh deliver client communication in a way that's not just you because you're gonna deliver uh negative experiences. Uh and so there's you know, there's all these different uh ways to do this. I'm curious, another show of hands, no judgment, how many people give clients direct access to them that they can call or text message the lawyer themselves? Okay, a couple, a lot less. Um so you know, it's just something to think about and Again, all practices are different. There's solos, there's there's folks that have uh support staffs. Do you how does how is um receptionist uh uh intake handled uh non-lawyer uh people at your firm? Who are they? Is it you mentioned paralegals? Is and is are are all of those in-house people co-located? The people that pick up the phone to uh field calls?
SPEAKER_00:Do they all show up at the office? Is that what you're asking?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I uh I I was I wasn't really trying to uh pigeonhole that as much as like, is are those are those like full-time employees of the firm that they tend to be? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So um uh I you know, I I should know this answer. My people have direct dials that they give out to clients, and I'm fairly confident that in our communication apps it says here's who your uh paralegal case manager is, and here's their direct dial. Um but you know, a certain number of phone calls come through reception and just get transferred to them. Right. But most of the time, that's because we've called the client and asked for something. More and more, Gee, um clients just want to text you. Right. And so that happens all through our case management software. Um, but they don't, especially the younger, like they don't even know how to pick up the phone or answer it or that none of them have voicemails that are actually set up.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Absolutely. Um one other question I wanted to ask you before I moved on, scheduling wise, because for uh which I think is if you if you're not if you're thinking if you're having trouble delivering communication, uh switching to this idea of you have to schedule is a huge game changer, like not just taking up unanticipated calls, like that'll change your life. Um talk to me about scheduling technology. How do they schedule with you?
SPEAKER_00:So I have an EA, so everything with me gets scheduled through my EA. Um because he's my calendar is completely time blocked. Like we I used Calendly for a while, and but the uh then I would have this block of like I'm doing deep work when now I'm available for client calls, and then Calendly can't understand that and the changes from week to week. So most of that gets scheduled now through my EA. Um, but everybody else, you know, the the receptionists or the parallelists have access to everybody else's calendar and outlook. So they just look.
SPEAKER_02:Scheduling for you, do you get a few years? Yeah, exactly. That's the exact same.
SPEAKER_01:The block is huge, but I think that maybe the sort of theme I'm getting here is that you know, Brian actually does a good job of keeping his boundaries. And I'm, you know, I feel like my staff are just like throwing like deep work on these nine meetings in this time. But it's that's my goal as well. And then I the other thing that I do that I think is that I have an attorney that does the consultations for the most part, not me. And she is a part-time attorney. And so, you know, it's they they're really about trying to fill her blocks with consultations and getting those consultations away from me has been has been huge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So if you're if you're trying to do this like for the first time ever, I suggest that you not be the one who schedules it. You have to have a gatekeeper who's doing it for you who does not care about saying no to people, right? Um, that's my EA does not care that you're only available Tuesday of whatever, right? Um, and so and then he's got some priorities. Uh okay, this is like a class A thing or class B. And you can interrupt my deep work to to book a call that's like on a million-dollar consult that I need to close. Like that's totally fine. Um, but I'm not gonna talk to somebody who's asking for an update who already got the fact that there is no update from my paralegal during my deep work time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Um one other thing that I wanted to touch on was we've really focused on you know this um experience in the context of the representation. Any other communications that you uh deliver to uh clients even beyond the representation? Uh, you know, maybe it's like uh uh holiday emails or cards, stuff like that. Uh what kind of stuff do you do for just high touch, uh great experience?
SPEAKER_00:We do five dollar Starbucks cards at uh on birthday anniversaries. Um it's probably more than five now, or five would get you like two-thirds of a drink. Um but we send we send Starbucks cards on uh anniversaries. We send to every referral, whether or not we take the case or not, everybody who has mentioned our name to somebody gets something similar. Handwritten card and a Starbucks card. Um an idea that I got, I'm I cannot remember who gave it to me. Um, or I would I would give you this guy's name. Um is sending a handwritten card to the client on the anniversary of the settlement or the result of their case so that they remember you, right? Because how how many people have handled a case where somebody has had uh a crash five years ago or a criminal uh and they can't remember the name of the lawyer because most lawyers are very bad at doing any follow-up once the case is over. So continuing that touch point, and then we have a monthly newsletter that goes out physically mailed um to our past client base.
SPEAKER_02:Uh Starbucks cards physic just uh I'm just trying to understand digital versus physical. Let's go mail those out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. We we every you know every couple months there's eight hundred dollars of Starbucks charges on the credit card because they've gone down and they bought a whole bunch of cards.
SPEAKER_02:Jared, anything outside of representation messaging-wise you send it.
SPEAKER_01:No. But I would we what night right now, unfortunately, is like uh we're sending them a lot of letters to past clients as well that relate to you know changes that might relate to them. And so, you know, that's kind of a different category. Um, and it's funny because my staff actually revolt against those communications because they're like, we send out these 1200 letters, like it's gonna slaughter us. So we have to talk about that kind of. I think I like to have, I think that we really need to communicate as a team around if we're gonna do something massive, whether it's a video that we're gonna try to have go viral or anything else, to have everybody ready for a wave coming in.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And I think uh in our experience, finding the balance between um the automation and the you know handwritten card, like that's a real trick. And I in my best advice is to try to figure out how to do both and and look for opportunities where uh some of those communications, you know, for for example, you know, again, everybody does it their own way, but you know, maybe the Starbucks card or a Visa gift, an Amazon card or something could be automated with a trigger um as opposed to someone actually having to like you know uh contact and mail it out, just making and and and but there's advantages to doing physical as well.
SPEAKER_00:So that can be automated with the trigger and done by somebody who's not you. Right. There's a uh there's a company called Handwritten, uh H-A-N-D-R W-R, public spelling, right? Um there's a Y in there somewhere. Um and uh is Delesi Friday who told me about this. Right. And I think she was the one actually who who told me about the one-year trigger. Um, handwritten will end your handwriting, right? You send them a handwriting sample and then they have an auto pen that writes it for you, will write your message and mail it, and it costs like three or five dollars a mailed piece.
SPEAKER_02:Um another just kind of question is thinking you mentioned that uh clients communicate via uh TikTok. Um are all of your social uh uh profiles and pages, do they have messaging enabled? Do you know off the top of your head?
SPEAKER_01:I so now yes, but there was a moment with TikTok where we had it off because you know it's the weird thing is that these platforms can have their own bugs and then the clients like the Instagram has a thing where it'll like uh both Instagram and TikTok have this problem where sometimes people will get put into some other box that's like message requested and then they get mad at you. Um and and then TikTok, if we have a viral video, the app literally when you go to open the inbox, will just start crashing if it has too many messages, which is just like I don't there's no good solution for that. Great problem to have. It could be good, but I mean, unless all those people are not the clients you want anyway, you know? But the so we turned it on and off. And then we definitely have a policy with the team where if it's a current client and they the current client wants to message us on TikTok or Instagram, no, they gotta go back into the practice management. And that's for note-taking, but also it just I don't, I don't, I mean, they're not confidential. And we should not trust them based on what we've seen. So we definitely have a a policy of trying to, once you're a client, you need you're not allowed to DM us on socials anymore.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's a good that's a good uh uh policy to have. Um Brian, are your do you know if your like Facebook page and stuff? Can people message you through that?
SPEAKER_00:The only people that message me through our Facebook page are people that want to optimize my YouTube page. Totally. Um But but I'll tell you, you know what we set up? Um so my dad has a long-term disability appeals practice, which is not SSDI, um, it's private policy stuff. And we set up a uh uh Facebook support group, affinity group for long-term disability appeals, and that's generated some um some business. People will message through that, right? And it's people come in and ask the question, and it's okay, you can't solve it in public, right? And and for me, it's like nobody I just don't think has figured out there's a law firm behind this, not that we're trying to hide it. Um, but that's generated a fair bit of business for us.
SPEAKER_02:Um one of the things I would suggest too, if you're going to enable uh any messaging app, really a social messaging app, is you can set up autoresponders on the the uh app itself. And so because one of the big problems, the big challenges is again, if you've got like all 20 different social media apps, all with messaging turned on, that can become a logistical nightmare to actually field those inbound messages. And so setting up an autoresponder that has uh both a phone number in the autoresponder as well as a link, uh whether it's to uh a website or a forum or some kind of other uh unified messaging system, like you can send them to WhatsApp, um, I think that's a really good way. And it's really important because a lot of these uh pages and profiles, if you are unresponsive through the messaging app, the platform will publish that you are not responsive. And so you're telling people, hey, we don't really communicate with uh people that try to uh connect with us. Becomes particularly uh problematic uh when you add ads in there because that's part of the algorithmic experience that the machine is trying to make decisions about where to serve your ads, uh, particularly if you run local services ads and you have messaging enabled, you really need to be able to respond to those messages within seconds. Um I'm curious, uh do you guys have local services? Is there local services? No, no LSAs. Um I've done it.
SPEAKER_01:I've used it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Did you do and do you remember if you had messaging on?
SPEAKER_01:I did. We had a bot connected to it. Uh but I know that Google will punish you if you don't.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You really, if you're going to receive messages and set expectations uh outside of like a very guided uh messaging system, it's really important that you have a lot of expectation setting, autoresponders, uh, the ability to communicate in other ways through, you know, whether it's links or uh direct phone numbers.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Well, and you know, and once they're a client, I don't think you can do that, right? Because the most bar rules require you to preserve all client communications. And how do you do that inside of Facebook or TikTok? Like that really needs to be routed back through your case management software.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Why would you turn off the DMs in these socials? I don't understand. Why some of them should turn them off?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I didn't I was just no, I'm saying why would a firm turn them off?
SPEAKER_02:Because I think many times it's because of the administrative nightmare and maybe some of the ethical concerns about people contacting. Um again, my view would be uh even if it's a client, if a client contacts you there, you know, you should have a little message that says, hey, all client communications has got to go back through uh either the phone number or the messaging app. If you're not a client, um, set expectations about you know what your follow-up policy is going to be and how to communicate. But the the reason I bring this up is because so many firms, you know, they're like their social media people are like, hey, create a Facebook page and they just default, set up the page, turn on the messaging thing, and then when when we go in to look at it, there are hundreds of messages. Yes, there's a lot of YouTube optimizers, but sometimes there's actually people that are trying to reach out to you because they thought that was the most uh convenient way to do it. Uh, you know, especially on uh referrals on LinkedIn, you know, people, I you see people making referrals through the messaging system on LinkedIn. And a lot of lawyers, because of the spam issue, just decide they don't want to uh open their inboxes. And if you don't have some kind of automated thing, you're delivering a bad communication experience because it's like you're this person's just ignoring me. I'm trying to reach out to them. They have this messaging uh system turned on, and so the expectation is that someone's gonna respond to it.
SPEAKER_01:I think I hate form fails. I can't believe marketers use them. I think that is the dumbest thing compared to getting someone into a conversation with you. And and if when we look at the data, like the the customers hate them too. And I hate them as a consumer. So I think that like the idea that if you want someone to see your content on this channel, Facebook, whatever it is, and they want to stay an app and Facebook and all that want them to. I mean, the idea that like you're doing this to get customers, you gotta you gotta take that DM. Well, I think we're just about time. Do we have any questions? Yep.
SPEAKER_03:I do have one question. I wanted to know if um any of you have had experience or heard of other people using AI receptionists. I'm an estate planning from a guardianship firm. Um, I tried it, of course, my older client telling me he did it. But um it was great because it was able to take a um comic knowledge base to utilize, and I do know that a couple of clients have been use it and answered some of their questions regarding like when guardianship is appropriate that helped in deciding for them to start a consultation or we don't handle that type of law. Have you guys had any experience or any tips on that?
SPEAKER_00:Is you are you talking about as a chat bot or as a as a talking back to you?
SPEAKER_03:As an actual talking back to you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I agree. Um I've not used any. I don't I don't think any of them are ready for prime time yet. I think the best listen. I think the best use of those things and of your after hours reception and your rollover call answering is driving somebody to a scheduled phone call with somebody in your office, right? And let that person in your office who actually knows about estate planning and knows about the kind of cases and clients that you want make the decision about what do we do with this next. I I think your goal, my goal when somebody brand new contacts us and we can't physically answer the phone right then is to stop them from looking for anybody else until I've had the chance to decide do I want to work on it.
SPEAKER_01:I love the voice. I think those voice bots are very interesting. I was talking to one the other day and uh uh I was being pitched one. We haven't we haven't done it yet. My uh do you do do you charge for consultations? I I just don't believe that a chat bot on the phone is gonna be able to get someone to give them money. I I don't I don't believe it. Um But I do, but text I think bots are a lot more this you can have more rich. We had a bot we built where it would um look at all the content you've made and then based on the customer's question, try to deliver them the video of you answering the question closest to theirs. So it was like close to you telling them what you knew, and it ended up um, you know, it wasn't it, I wouldn't say that it was a total success, but I still think that that is the answer is like if you've got enough rich content figuring out that that that would be the way to go if you can invest in it.
SPEAKER_02:So we have deployed them, and um the biggest uh things I can tell you are it's back to that expectation setting. Uh first disclosure that it's a uh bot, uh not a human being. Um set expectations about what the bot can actually answer. In fact, be proactive about that. Have the bot say, these are the types of things that I can answer. Um, these are the types of things that I can do just to lay that out. Uh be very specific with the uh instructions when you set it up uh to say that these are the things I will not answer, especially as they relate to practicing law and that kind of thing. Um but I think to Brian's point too, that's what I'd be, I'd be using it for frontline uh segmentation to get somebody to the appropriate next step. Um and I think it's it can be very effective uh in that context. Uh but so much of this is that context window and make it very easy for them to opt out. I mean, we've all used a chat. I well, maybe I shouldn't say that. Many of uh businesses that I've had to engage with banking. Um, I just bought something from LG, they're using voice bots. I mean, enterprise-wise, this is where uh customer service frontline defense is going. And um, you know, so much of it is to make it so easy to opt out of the bot experience when somebody wants to do that. Like, here's how you talk to a person. Don't make that hard. Don't have the bot try to like, you know, I can handle it. Um, and so I would I would give that advice. But I do think that uh from what I've seen over the last year, we're gonna see in the coming year, two years that they're going to be almost indistinguishable. And I think that that's gonna be a big part of the frontline defense. But uh the other thing that I'll say too is uh about all of this stuff and really anything at your practice, shop your firm. You know, uh have somebody that's accountable. If you've got a if you've got support people, have people that are accountable for managing the client experience uh itself. And so uh the point is that you set up these systems and processes and technology and the stuff breaks all the time. People don't follow process, uh, technology doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Uh, have a regular cadence of shopping your firm all the way through uh at each phase of the representation to be able to work out those bugs and uh hold people accountable that are responsible for uh delivering that experience to folks. Question?
SPEAKER_00:Um particular recommendation.
SPEAKER_02:I've had a little, we've had a lot of success with Juvo leads. Um they'll field the messages. They also do an on-page experience. But if if you search for folks that want to shop around on this, like just search for like local services as messaging uh tools. There's a bunch of them out there that are that will do dedicated messaging.
SPEAKER_00:Juvo is not an AI lead, though. No, it's not. It's a live person on the other end, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's oh yeah, sorry. That's I did that should that's a good point. Juvo does human reception, virtual receptionists through directly through the uh LSA, though. And would you recommend the same on the phone call that did that I can't answer the phone? Uh Juvo doesn't handle phone, but I would I would have somebody, I mean, speed kills in this business. Like you've got to have somebody, especially if you're gonna do advertising, you have to be someone human, ideally, again, back to that thing I said at the start. Ideally, you have an empathetic lawyer answering all the phone calls. That's not realistic. And so work your way through that process of like, is this something we're gonna turn over to a virtual receptionist? Is this something we're gonna have as a uh an in-house receptionist? I know firms that kind of do like the pass the baton. So like lawyers are, you know, I've got the 10 to 12 during uh business hours, I got the 11 to whatever. Um, but you know, you have to uh define all that for yourself. But the key is that if you're going to run any kind of advertising, just remember, people that are gonna come to you through advertising, they won't refer to you. They're not gonna have any patience for you. There's a 50 other lawyers to go down the list on LSAs. Um, and so you've got to be fast, you've got to be showing empathy, you've got to be getting people signed up. Uh ideally it's um, you know, answer as many questions, stop their search and get them to retain within, you know, minutes, really, in my opinion. Um, Brian, thoughts?
SPEAKER_00:No, I mean that's you're exactly right, right? Is um what's the practice area?
unknown:Criminal defense.
SPEAKER_00:Criminal defense, right? Um and so a little bit different than personal injury, but speed in in our business is absolutely critical. Uh I I think Lex Reception is here. They offer that kind of service. I use Smith AI. With all of these after hours of voice, and Smith AI is not actually an AI agent, it's a live person. You you have to understand, like, these are really hard positions to staff. Like who wants to answer phones for 25 different law firms for eight hours a day? That's a really hard position. And so the least amount of ask that you can have of them of screening and then moving them to the next step with you, that's really the goal with any of these after hours answering services. Other questions? Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Uh I forgot your green name, but my question is. Um you mentioned that you don't do your consultations, which I think is amazing. In our case, um we have a very niche basically area of practice that requires our managing attorney to do the consultations. However, it becomes an issue when we then do the hire and then it gets shifted over to an associate attorney. Because clearly he can't handle 300 plus cases all by himself. Where the clients then don't want to talk to the associate attorney. They only want to deal with him, him, and only him, and that becomes a very big problem. Um would you recommend because he the consultations have to be done by him? That maybe the associate attorney be present during the consultation, only because of the complexity of some of the cases that we have, where he would be the best one to give, you know, the legal advice, and this is what we can do, and whatever. Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I think you seized on the right thing. Like there's definitely uh when I was doing all the consultations, that friction is there, and that's you know, goes back to the first thing that Gee said. They want you to answer the phone right away. It's like that's their ideal state. So the way that I handled it then, still do when I do consults now, and the consulting attorney does is that part of the customer qualification and the product that you're selling them is has got to be the idea that we are a team. And you know, I would literally say to them, it could be that you and I will never speak again, you know, after this consultation. Are you okay with that? And and even you've got to be even more explicit, you know, this associate is going to be the one that you're gonna that's gonna handle your case, whether they're in the consultation or not. You know, is that okay for you? And if if they're not okay with it, you need to not make the sale because you don't have alignment in terms of expectations and and what's really gonna happen. Or, you know, the other thing I will do sometimes it is, you know, I can handle some of these things, but it's gonna cost you X more. You know, is it worth it to you? And they almost always say no. And they're kind of they're willing to take it out of me, but when I shift it over to them, they're not willing. So, you know, that would be how I would sell it is that mix of being clear. And then if you are willing to offer that service, you know, take it out of them.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing I would add, of course, is this is again, everybody's practice is different, and there's our um, you know, business models and pricing issues and all these things that are uh aligned with it. But if the if the bottleneck is capacity, maybe it's time to hire another lawyer that can uh you know do consultations or something like that. Or and you can do that on a variety of bases, whether it's fractional or independent contractor. Um but anyway, the the capacity issue is a real thing, even beyond just communication. And it goes to the nature of the business that you're trying to build. And if you want your firm to be that, um, you know, you're gonna deal with the lawyer on those consultations, and it's only gonna be one lawyer, then I think uh, you know, Jared's advice is really good is that you have to just be like, this is what it is. It's clear, and this is and and there's gonna, and I think business-wise, you have to recognize that at any given time, this is going to be a cap on the volume of clients that we can handle, and we have to accept that from a growth standpoint.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I have one more hiring tip that I have done though, is that I I hired an attorney who was closing her own practice and wanted to move to part-time, and she's a monster in consults, and then I was paying her by the hour, and I actually, yep, she could do consult. So, you know, maybe there's another attorney that has that skill set a little down the road in their career who's willing to come in and work for you as a consulting attorney. For a lot of attorneys that are good at consults, it's actually a dream come true. I don't have to deal with any of the like tough aftercase. I can close. So maybe look down that road as well.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much. We're getting the uh hook. If you have further questions, please feel free to come up uh and ask them. Thank you so much for attending.
